Things fluttered appropriately – an interview with Sandra Antonelli

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A Basic Renovation is available from Escape Publishing, the Itunes Bookstore, and Amazon.

A Basic Renovation by Sandra Antonelli

Two years ago, I met Sandra Antonelli through her writing on Twitter. Here was an author who I thought was funny, smart, relished earworms, rat terriers and spider scares, and could tell great stories all in 140 characters. Following her twitter feed was a given for me and she followed me back resulting in many interesting exchanges. Last week I ventured into reading her first published book with Escape Publishing.

Property renovator Lesley thinks she can combine a little business with her annual visit to her parents in Los Alamos, but that’s before she runs into Dominic. Single father Dominic, quantum physicist turned hardware store owner believes Lesley is A) poison; B) a lesbian who ruined his little brother’s life; and C) the detonator to a 50 megaton secret. What starts as cold fury turns into nuclear attraction, and naturally, they fall for each other, but can their love survive the fallout when Dominic’s little atomic bomb goes off?

This is a contemporary romance set in New Mexico, USA. I already liked Sandra’s writing style (why else would I have followed her on Twitter for so long) but would that style extend to reading a 314 page novel? I was nervous! Well, by page twenty, to quote her character Lesley, “things fluttered appropriately”. I fell in love with this story. And just a teeny weeny bit more in love with Sandra, who was kind enough to agree to being my first ever Shallowreader interview.

Shallowreader: Hello Sandra! Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed by me today. You are popping my interviewer cherry so please be gentle.

Sandra: ‪I’ll use coffee as a lubricant.

Shallowreader: ‪Oooh! Now you are even more appealing 😉

Sandra: ‪Coffee fixes everything.

Shallowreader: ‪Let’s get straight into your book – there were no cherries popped in this book. Tell me why you chose to write a romance with older characters than you find in traditional romances?

Sandra: A variety of reasons really. First, why not? I’ve always appreciated characters who had interesting life experiences. When I was thirteen I was reading about Jane Eyre and the second Mrs DeWinter (from Rebecca) and they were older than me. When I was seventeen I was reading about women who were older than me. Then in my twenties I was reading about women who were roughly the same age—and they bored the crap out of me because they were so inexperienced. By the time I was thirty I found it harder and harder to relate to the heroines in romance because they were younger with very little life experience under their feet. The harder I looked for a more mature-aged heroine, the more I was led to Women’s Fiction—which to me, is not romance. That annoyed me. Chronological age becomes irrelevant if the story engages you or the reader—if you connect to something. I wanted to read romance not Women’s Fiction ‘relationship’ novels about best friends and cheatin’ husbands. Writers are often told to ‘write what you know’ or to ‘write the book you want to read.’ So that’s what I started doing. I took that life experience and life baggage and jumped on the romance train.

‪Shallowreader: I’m so glad you jumped on that train! As a reader, women’s fiction and finding-one’s-true-self-due-to-broken-relationships books have never appealed to me either yet so few romances depict older women. Do you think cultural expectations (and by default publishers predicting readers expectations) still relate back to the juvenile attitude of “Ewwww! It’s like knowing that your mum and dad still do it“?

Sandra: ‪To some extent yes, there is that ick factor inherent for some. For others it’s a matter of ‘romance is fantasy and I don’t want an ageing body in MY fantasy’ or ‘I want to picture pretty, not as I am, I don’t want a reminder I’m getting older’. Then there are readers (like me) who are fine with more realism in the fantasy, fine with getting older and would like to see that translated into romance fiction. The heroine’s beauty/allure is in the eye of the hero; he finds her crow’s feet sexy or her big ass sexy. People over forty fall in love and have sex like demented bunnies. Why not have that fantasy in romance?

Shallowreader: ‪I agree. I have owned demented bunnies. I loved the part in the book where Dominic points to a hair that Lesley thought she had removed and their ensuing aging body banter. I swooned!

Sandra: ‪I think some people think, as one editor did, that forty plus sex scenes are gong to include long descriptions of sagging boobs and flaccid penises—which of course would spoil any romantic fantasy. As a side note here: One of my favourite romance novels has two romances running simultaneously. Jenny Crusie’s Trust Me On This—to me the more engaging romance was between Harry and Victoria and they were sixty somethings. Harry was so turned on by the sight of Victoria’s skin. It was fantastic! They deserved the entire BOOK!

Shallowreader: I was still in my twenties when I read Jenny Crusie’s Anyone But You. Her female character was in her forties and this was a non-issue for me as a reader as the story was wonderful. I feel the same way about Lesley and Dominic in A Basic Renovation. They are in their forties and this just makes the romance stronger.

‪Sandra: As I said earlier, chronological age becomes irrelevant if the story engages the reader. I have read a few twenty-something heroines who, because of their circumstances have more experience than most women their age, and those stories have enthralled me. In fact, unless it’s specified or it constantly hammers me in the face—which happens more than I like—I forget about the heroine’s age as I read. It’s, as you said, a non-issue because I’ve engaged with the story and the heroine’s age becomes irrelevant. Her age is not driving the plot; the romance is driving the plot. That being said, if I were to read a romance with a mature-aged heroine who was all wrapped up in her age and worried about ageing (and I’ve read two) I would feel hammered in the face. I don’t want to read about someone ageing, I want to read about someone falling in love and getting a happily ever after despite their age because that is what happens in life.

 

Shallowreader: Is Crusie a big influence on your writing? Who else has influenced you?

Sandra: I really love Elmore Leonard. He writes crime and Westerns. Some readers may know him. Movie lovers will know his work like Get Shorty, Out of Sight (and the oh-so-sexy boot/trunk scene with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez) and Jackie Brown. He has the most fantastic characters and THE most sublime dialogue. Right now his work is on TV with the show Justified. I adore his character Jackie Brown from Rum Punch—she’s an over forty flight attendant/smuggler who beats the mob. Jackie’s awesome and I can only pretend my romance emulates Leonard. I admire Suzanne Brockmann, Rachel Gibson and Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Jo Goodman because they write such multilayered and engaging stories, so I supposed they influenced me though osmosis. Or I like to think they have.

‪Shallowreader: I certainly see the Elmore Leonard influence – particularly your dialogue. I love that she nicknames Dominic “Walks-with-hard-on” and the verbal slamming was great. Your use of “fuck” and flipping the bird just made me want to read more books by you. I saw, not only Leonard, but a touch of Tarantino too but without the blood and gore, just with all the juicy language and wit. And I found your book really funny. I struggle to find books that are funny. I think writing humour is the most difficult of all writing crafts as timing and intonation is key. The act of reading internally differs so greatly from dramatisations or audio books where the actors or readers help convey the humour. I was snorting and laughing out loud as I read through this book. Did you find the humour writing difficult?

‪Sandra: You’re being very nice to me. I’d like to see a Leonard-esqueness in my writing. My sense of humour is that of a 12 or 13 year old boy, but I have a rule when I write: Sort of. I try not to do fart jokes or poop humour because, while I appreciate them, I know they’re not, uh, everyone’s cup of tea. I laugh like hell when I write the comedy scenes, but I never know if someone else if going to find the scene funny. I can only hope the readers do. Your snorting and laughing out loud is a good sign!

‪ Shallowreader: Farts can even be romantic in the right context

Sandra: Yes, farts can be romantic if the situation is right–say like in a car…

‪Hang on….Tarantino? Me? Oh, if you could only hear MY soundtrack for A Basic Renovation…

Shallowreader: ‪That IS my next question! Music and food are a big part of your book. What would be your soundtrack to your book and what do you recommend your readers to eat while they read it. For the record, I ate lots of cashews and salt and vinegar chips while drinking rosé – I’m a classy shallowreader.

Sandra: ‪Salt and vinegar with rosé? Coffee. Coffee and cookies. Or Cherry Limes from Sonic. Or apple pies from McDonald’s (if only Oz MCDonald’s had the cherry pies!). Music…well, I had to edit out the references to the songs Lesley listens to because not everyone would care or know the music but I have a playlist. It’s a little long…

Shallowreader: Do share it!

Sandra: ‪Here are a few of the songs. Any more and we’d be here for a week.

  • ‪In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Iron Butterfly–very important
  • ‪From My Head to My Heart Evan & Jaron Evan and Jaron
  • ‪Glory Days Bruce Springsteen
  • ‪Goodbye Girl Squeeze
  • ‪New Shoes Paolo Nutini
  • ‪Phantom Limb The Shins
  • ‪Buy a Dog LUCE
  • ‪Red Dragon Tattoo Fountains of Wayne
  • ‪Seven Nation Army The White Stripes
  • ‪Supernova Liz Phair
  • ‪Worn Me Down Rachael Yamagata
  • ‪Wounded Nik Kershaw
  • ‪You Can Bring Me Flowers Ray LaMontagne
  • ‪That’s Just What You Are Aimee Mann
  • ‪Trust Me To Open My Mouth Squeeze
  • ‪Fought the Law Bobby Fuller Four
  • ‪No I In Threesome Interpol

Shallowreader: Can I say that I started reading your book with a bit of trepidation. We have known each other for a while as we met on Twitter as romance reading and studying followers so reviewing a tweep’s book could have gone belly up for both of us, and you used my least favourite romance trope in that Lesley was married to Dominic’s brother over 16 years earlier. This always creeps me out yet in your book you address this relationship and it is an issue and it isn’t all resolved despite getting past Regis‘s point of ritual death and the betrothal. I was interested to see that you added one of her optional elements “The Scapegoat exiled”. You took this disliked trope and turned it around for me. You also left a couple of unresolved issues which I liked because life is not nice and tidy yet so many books end with a “life will be perfect from here on” view.

Sandra: They were married but not really married and not divorced….I liked playing with that. I like when an author can turn a trope on its ear. I hate Secret babies in Contemporary romance. I mean I really, really hate them, but Susan Donovan took the secret baby (Girl Most Likely To) and make it work for me, and like you, I was shocked that she reeled me in! I’m glad I did that to you!

Hitchcock said you don’t need to give every little detail, you simply have to reel the movie-goer in. It’s a MacGuffin of a sort, to have a few devices or hooks that keep the reader reading… And did you notice that Lesley thought Dominic was having an issue about her past with his brother/her ex Terry before she realised what the REAL issue was?

A very lovely, well-established author was kind enough to look at this book when I stated writing it. She told me she thought readers would have an issue with the two brothers thing—which made me all the more determined to keep it in! Even a character in the book, Fabian, Dominic’s buddy mentions this too.

Shallowreader: Do you kill fairies?

Sandra: ‪Nope. I like to be surprised. And it bugs me if there’s a ‘baby epilogue.’ Come on leave something to my imagination.

Shallowreader: ‪Baby epilogues don’t bother me – and I love a secret baby plot too .

I’ll finish with saying: Your book oozes romance on many levels, from Dominic’s son Kyle on his first dates, Lesley’s still in-love parents and her sharp-tongued grandfather with ‘tude courting a woman for the first time in thirty years, as well as the wonderful primary romance between Lesley and Dominic. Thank you so much for writing this book and for being gentle with my first time interview. I’d like to say that I lay back and did it for my blog.

Sandra: Thank you for reading it and thank you more for enjoying it, for laughing out loud, and thank you for letting me get there before anyone else! I used protection.

A Basic Renovation is available from EscapePublishing, the iTunes Bookstore, and Amazon.

You can find Sandra on twitter @SandrAntonelli

and Facebook http://facebook.com/AuthorSandraAntonelli

Emerging from January

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All month I have had a number of posts stewing in my brain yet I managed to not write any of them until now – so this is a super long blog post.

January was a culmination of several events for me. I have finally finished my Certificate IV in Training and Assessment allowing me to teach in the TAFE system. I used to teach at TAFE 10 years ago when I was not required to have a qualification beyond Train the Trainer. I found the teaching rather harrowing as there were times I was being handed the lesson plan 10 minutes before the class itself. With this certificate I feel much more prepared – now to pick up some casual hours!

I completed a 10 thousand word assessment for university. Even as I sit here all I can think is that there is so much more I wanted to write. I could have easily added another 5 K. I’ve since met with my supervisors who are trying to convince me to move from a Masters program to a Doctorate program. They keep saying “doctorate” as though it is a forgone conclusion but for me it is a much harder decision. I’m loving the study but I am finding the whole parenting/studying/working balance difficult.  As much as I would love to be a Doctor of Rrrrrromance in libraries I may just settle to be a Mistress of Rrrrromance in libraries instead.

I managed to get slammed by an anonymous blogger called Annoyed Librarian over at Library Journal. There seems to be a badge of honour amongst a few librarian bloggers such as @ScrewyDecimal and @Catagator who have also been slammed. I felt spesh. Am I the only antipodean to merit this treatment *preen*?  The slamming came while I was in the midst of my 10K assessment and TAFE resubmissions. As much as I wanted to get in there and comment again I was a very good student and focused on my assessments. In brief, the blogger made a number of derogatory comments about housebound romance readers to which I questioned her professionalism. In the slamming, she questioned public librarians and readers’ advisors professionalism and how she was “happy to have a little fun goading romance readers and writers”. And here is the irony. My aforementioned 10K assessment is about the marginalisation of ordinary culture by cultural institutions – namely libraries/librarians marginalising romance fiction: Romance fiction and its authors and readers. I came across the first post in searching for more current examples of librarians showing derision towards the readers of the most highly read fiction genre. Not only had I found more evidence for my paper but by her responding in the form of another blog rather than a simple reply she gave me even more material. Just as I was thinking that perhaps the library situation wasn’t all that bad she gave me plenty of fodder that was instantly added to my research.

By the time I had a moment to make my own comment a number of people had already made enough comments rejecting her blog stance against public librarians so I happily did not leave my own. But here’s the thing: when her blog was first pubished I had a number of people contact me – some through public tweets and others through email and Twitter DMs in support of my comments, which I appreciated. But the comments and discussion outside of the official website will not remain part of a digital record. The comments dismissing the blogger for not having the courage to write under her own name, the comments dismissing Library Journal as a credible opinion source in the industry due to their validating a”library troll”, and the incredulity that there were still readers of the blog, are not part of an official record. Researchers in 100 years will be going to the industry stalwart, Library Journal, but how they will connect to the conversation that is happening in other online forums about their articles, particularly discussions held elsewhere as most librarians are hesitant to post comments on LJ as they know they will be the next librarian to be ridiculed? What sort of legacy of information will allow for these informal (yet illuminating) conversation to be found. I’ve been told that there is research into this question but I have become the lazy researcher at this stage of January and I haven’t searched for more information. If I find some links I will post them on a later blog.

Since I finished writing my papers 10 days ago I have chilled out with my kids, I’ve watched lots of TV – reruns of Coupling, Scrubs, Friends, Big Bang Theory and Ben Stiller movies. I love Hank Azaria in Along came Polly saying “Rueben, look me in the eyeball” and the extreme sports corporate Bryan Brown. After 366 books in 2012, I have begun 2013 in fine form and I have read only 2 books The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville which was lovely and A Basic Renovation by Sandra Antonelli which was fab fab fab and I will be writing a separate blog post for next week. My family and I spent a lovely week in Wollombi in the Hunter Valley at my sister-in-law’s farm. We swam in the dam daily, we watched kangaroos grazing, we played lots of Wii and generally did the holiday pleaser of nothing much.

Coming up, I am going to be on a romance panel on Valentine’s Day with Isolde Martyn and Jane Austen Society journal editor Joanna Penglase to discuss 200 years and the romance focus of Pride and Prejudice. I’m really excited to be involved in such an event seeing the pretty much universal appeal of the book. I’m pretty sure I have been asked along to bring in the contemporary romance tie-in. Though I liked Pride and Prejudice when I first read it I have not been part of the fandom. I have not reread it (but plan to before the event) and I don’t think much of Colin Firth. My husband really wanted to give our oldest son the middle name of D’Arcy, after his great-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandfather D’Arcy Wentworth, to which I objected as I wasn’t all that chuffed at naming my son after a highwayman despite the fact that he came good upon coming to the colony of New South Wales as the second fleet’s doctor and as a free settler (oh – the irony as my son tells me he would have loved to have D’Arcy as his name). In my research for this panel  I discovered the Lizzie Bennet Diaries just to discover my favouritest ever Darcy. I have become obsessed with this vlog and transmedia fiction. I follow the characters on twitter, I read Jane’s Tumblr and Lydia is totally understood. And the whole “Socially Awkward Darcy” meme is fun. And most importantly, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries have given me that jolt in my stomach. That feeling that romance readers get when they come across a couple that you know should be together, and despite the fact that I know there is a happy ever after, the anticipation that only a good adaptation and dramatisation can affect, that feeling that perhaps these two will not get past Regis’s point of ritual death. I do love the well retold romance.

366 books wrap up or how I will never ever ever again set a daily book reading target

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It’s a few days into 2013 and I have finally looked at my 2012 reading. At the beginning of the year I stupidly set myself a target of 366 books in 366 days. Yes STUPIDLY. I had been doing challenges for several years but I decided to up the ante in the National Year of Reading. My definition of book was any publication with an ISBN. It did not need to be long narrative, it could be picture books, photo essays, interior decorating and cooking along with novels of any sort. By September I was ready to declare reading bankruptcy. I was setting aside nights for reading as well as spending a few hours a fortnight at a library. I found my casual reading had become a chore that was to be added to my many other tasks. This of course was ontop of all my journal reading and news reading and twitter reading and blog reading and work reading and report reading and all the other peripheral reading that comes with life. It was tiring. And all I can say is thank god for picture books and rereading for they were the only way I was going to meet my ridiculous target. And in particular, my rereading of old favourite romances that I had stowed away or found at op shops made me feel enlightened as I was viewing them with middle aged eyes when previously I had viewed them as a teenager. For some books, such as Charlotte Lamb’s Desire and Sara Craven’s Sup with the Devil I retained my love for them but others had not aged well over three decades such as Jo Calloway’s A Classic Love that I thought was totally romantic as a 15 year old but as a 43 year old I was horrified by the psychotic, stalker behaviour.

Oddly enough, I had 2 months where I was ill with severe asthma and I read less in that time than the rest of the year and I still met my target. It wasn’t all grumpy reader though. I did discover some amazing authors that I have added to my “must read” list.

Another thing that happened this year is that after 6 years of being on WeReads I transferred all my books over to GoodReads which has a social interaction that I never felt over at WeReads. This has proven to be both good and limiting for reasons that I won’t go into on this post. My actual reading is much broader than is represented on GoodReads and certainly I can’t list my favourite blogs so I am interested in keeping a list of my blog reading somehow and I am open to suggestions.

Here is a link to all my 2012 books: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4452547-shallowreader-vaveros?read_at=2012

As for some of my 2012 stats and my favourite reads of the year:

366 books:

137 novels (including graphic novels, junior and young adult novels)

160 picture books with 42 library storytime recommendations.

29 non-fiction narrative books and 44 non-fiction pictorial books (cookbooks, interior decorating, humour etc).

My first (It’s Always Been You) and last (Close Enough to Touch) books were by Victoria Dahl and I also read one other book (Real Men Will) by her during the year. All three were enjoyable reads (2 got five stars and 1 got 4 stars).

Most read author: Charlotte Lamb (10 books) followed closely by Sara Craven (8 books).

Gender:

Female  266 (49 Australian Women Writers)

Male 130

This number is a misrepresentation as I only counted the first author listed for each book which means some wonderful illustrators were not counted in the male/female divide. I am surprised at the high number of male authors though I think that the picture books I read may have skewed this number.

My favourite books

I read 77 five star books (and only 16 one star books) so I have chosen the wonderful titles that stand out for me. I have also chosen to list first time reads only and not to list any favourite rereads.

 Novels:

A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant filled me with wonder. Beautiful language, awkward sex and land economics. Wonderful!

Temptation by Charlotte Lamb. A retro romance read that with a lyrical first half and a vicious, bitter second half that tore the hero to bits. This book blew me away!

Easy by Tammara Webber. A book that had me anxious throughout. Beautifully written characters. Loved it.

The Devil and the Deep by Amy Andrews. I grinned throughout this book. A story within a story, contemporary romance with glimpses of a historical romance that the author character had written. A childhood crush, great dialogue and hot hot hotness. I nearly didn’t add this book as I wasn’t sure if I was influenced by the fact the author sent me a copy of the book but a week after I finished it I can’t wait to reread it.

What I Did For a Duke by Julie Anne Long. I loved the private discussions in this book. They were cheeky and made me anticipate each page.

Ride With Me by Ruthie Knox. The trans-American bike ride as the setting for this fab romance carried the story for me. I used google maps to follow the relationship.

Picture Book romances:

Lilli-Pilli: the Frog Princess by Vashti Farrer is gorgeous. It is a picture book historical regency romance with a ball and a handsome prince and overall awesomesauce.

The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate by Joy Cowley is a pirate romance. A feisty heroine sparring with the pirate hero and sparks do fly. Spectacular!

Picture Books:

The Dreadful Fluff by Aaron Blabey. A book about killer belly button fluff being hunted down by a kickass heroine. Fan-bloody-tastic! Blabey is brilliant!

Hunting for Dragons by Bruce Whatley. I love Whatley’s books. Cool, ambling, fun!

King Jack and the Dragon by Peter Bentley. Ever so sweet a story of kids playing castles in their back yard. Gorgeous illustrations, heroic and fun with a touch of young child angst.

The Aunties Three by Nick Bland. Snarky fun. Auntie humour. This book may thrill me purely because I have 3 sisters and all our kids will relate to this fab book.

The Singing Mermaid by Julia Donaldson. As usual, the rhythm and rhymes of Donaldson’s books are perfect with a wonderful storytelling of a captive mermaid.

Reading in Action (that is two words) Challenge 2013

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I am on the verge of completing my 2012 reading challenge. I set myself the aim of reading 366 books. I am currently reading number 365 and I am quietly confident that I will make my target. I will write a separate blog post about it. This post however is my challenge for 2013. I did not want to post it next week as it would strike me too much of a New Year’s Resolution and too easy to break.

I have spent the last 4 years doing reading challenges and book binges. I can honestly say that though they stretch me timewise, they do not challenge me as I love reading. I have noted that my reading was much broader 4 years ago when I look at previous years’ books. I now read romance novels almost exclusively but this does not concern me. 20 years ago I read literature almost exclusively. Reading preferences change over time. But what reading does is make me sedentary and this is not good. I need to get up, stretch, walk and exercise and I am going to do a Reading in Action challenge.

My Reading in Action challenge is the following:

To walk 5 kilometres for every book I read with more than 100 pages

To walk 1 kilometre for every 20 pages for books with less than 100 pages

To not start another book until I have completed my associated walking, the exception being picture books as I usually read 4 or 5 in a sitting at which point I will do the cumulative walking after the one sitting

If it is a rainy season, I will use my rowing machine as a substitute to cover the same distance.

I will continue reading at my own pace and I will keep track of books on Goodreads as I have been doing for many years (on WeRead before I moved to GR). I will specifically be noting my Australian Women Writer’s Reading and Reviewing books (AWW13) and following the www.readwatchplay.wordpress.com monthly themes but I am not going to set any targets.

I guess my next step after writing this blog post is buying a pair of walking shoes.

On reading, intelligence and heroes

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My grandmother

One of the most broadminded, intelligent people I have known was my illiterate maternal grandmother. My grandmother, orphaned by 17, had been widowed twice by the time she was 43, she outlived eight of her twelve children and was blind for her last five years of life before dying aged 86 after a number of strokes after severe radiation sickness caused during the Chernobyl disaster. She lived the majority of her life in the northern Pindus mountains of Greece; her only time away was the three years she lived in Australia with my family in the 1970s. My grandmother was kindly towards everyone. Even those that said hurtful things to her. She would encourage her kids to play with the gypsy tsingani kids when the Greek kids picked on them because their dad had died. She taught her children escape routes to bomb shelters and how to shelter in the snow. She opened her doors to people regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds – Turks, Germans, Italians and British even though a few of her children had died in battle due to their countrymen. She stood up to the husbands in her village that abused their wives. One occasion had her defending a beaten woman with “You have a blond baby because your wife is blond and your mother is blond not because she slept with a blond man. Look at your kin!”. She was a keen economist, measuring food stores for her large family, managing her family’s agricultural land and the care of their sheep and goats, calculating their winter needs, never running out of food yet having enough to help out families that never planned ahead. When villagers sneered and spat at her grandchildren’s partners for being unmarried and non-Greeks she would stand up and say “If they are in my home that means I accept them. And if I accept them you have no right to come near my home and behave in such a way”.

My mother, observing the village priest walking around with a rifle slung over his shoulder during the Greek Civil War, asked her mother “Why does the priest carry a gun?”. My grandmother answered “You never do as the priest does, you only do as he says”.

My grandmother, who could not read or write, knew that it was the words that mattered and not the format in which the words were delivered. My grandmother is a model of Popperian cosmology. My grandmother knew how to listen and understood that the words did not belong to those who said them. “You only do as he says”. She knew that this man standing at the pulpit was reading from The Bible and these were not his words. She understood that the products of thought were not associated with the person orating the thoughts. She considered the words she heard, she played with them in her mind and in her strong intelligent manner decided on how she would allow those words to affect her.

I have been reading a lot of books and reports this past year on reading and to a lesser degree, literacy. I have found there is a lot of rhetoric around about the power of the written word, how reading gives you access to new worlds, more empathy and a deeper understanding of humanity. Sometimes, when I am reading about the importance of literacy, I get this sense that illiteracy and low-literacy is equated with being narrow-minded, simple, weak willed and being a victim. As though, illiterate people lack intelligence, lack the ability to listen to stories with focus and to employ an analytical mind that engages and observes the actions and feelings associated with the story or the information that they are hearing. There isn’t any example I can pinpoint. This sense I get is implicit. I am mindful that having low literacy does not mean you are not engaged in culture and politics or that you are unable to feel empathy for others. I have met many literate people in my life who are bigots. These are people who read broadly, yet they make racist and elitist comments, belittling others because they feel superior in their intelligence. Do I think I am smarter than others because I can read and write? Not at all. Do I feel that I possess more empathy for others purely because I read a lot and that the reader of one book a year has less empathy? Once again, no. For we are made up of the whole of our experiences and not only those associated with the words we read. I do think that my reading provides me more sources to draw from and I feel fortunate because I can enjoy storytelling in both oral and written forms but this does not make me a more empathetic person. But we are in a world that values the written word over the spoken word. Even now, in the 21st century, the majority of examinations in schooling are still written. There is no oral examination for native students of English in Australia (at least that I am aware of). You could be a lively, expressive student with deep cultural knowledge and an enquiring nature yet if your handwriting is slow or clumsy you are most likely going to be awarded a basic mark and will be described as having limited knowledge. This injustice angers me, astounds me, upsets me. Low literacy is not a mark of low intelligence.

Nobel Prize winner George Seferis considered General Yiannis Makriyannis to be one of Greece’s masters of Modern Greek Prose. General Makriyannis is one of the heroes of the Greek War of Independence and only taught himself to read and write, at age 35, after becoming the General Leader of the Executive Authority of the Peloponnese after the war. He taught himself to read and write because he was frustrated at the misreporting of the War of Independence and he wanted to leave his memoirs, his account. I first heard about Makriyannis from my incredibly well-read father. When I look upon my father’s bookshelves I find Aristotle, St Paul, Shakespeare, Boccaccio, Dante, Georgette Heyer, Dale Carnegie, Cicero, Grace Metalious, Patrick Dennis and tomes of encyclopeadias that he would read cover to cover. My dad never received any formal schooling. He grew up high in Central Greece’s mountains in a shangri-la. He taught himself to read when his village priest allowed him to access the church bible and the psalter and he received an occasional lesson from a passing teacher. His first formal education came with being drafted to the army where he was given charge of Sunday ecclesiastical lessons and the army sponsored his entry to study theology at the University of Athens. He completed 2 years of his studies before migrating to Australia. My dad, having taught himself to read and write in Greek, proceeded to teach himself to read and write in English and prided himself for being a white collar worker. I remember visiting him in his office in East Sydney where he sat at his desk puffing away at his cigarettes, ashtray piled high and his secretary at the desk next to him. My favourite story about my dad’s obsessive reading is from my uncle Arthur. It was the late 1950’s and my dad’s sister had been worried for she hadn’t heard from him for over a month so she sent her husband in search of my dad. My uncle Arthur asked around and discovered that dad was renting a bedsit in Kings Cross. He knocked at the door, when it opened from a thick plume of smoke emerged my father. My uncle asked him “Where did you disappear to?” to which my dad exclaimed “Into my books!”. Now, I realise there was a certain insensitivity in that my dad forgot to contact his sister to even say hello but imagine the glory of uninterrupted reading, drowning in the sea of storytelling. And as funny as this story is, the fact remains that his reading did not make him empathetic as to the needs of his worried sister.

There is not doubt that being literate, being well-read, opens many doors and gives people opportunities that would have been impossible without the skills to read and write. I am always grateful that I was born at a time, in a place and to parents, where learning to read and write was a core necessity as it is a skill that has given me many opportunities. Literacy programs are a necessity as they empower people in our print-based culture. But I am always conscious that being literate does not make me kinder, smarter or more motivated than someone who isn’t highly literate. When there is a call to promote a love of reading as a literacy tool, librarians, booksellers, publishers, authors, educators, all of us bookish souls must take care to not diminish the visual, aural, oral and personal experiences, as well as the intellectual capacities of people with low literacy for not only are they our equals but in many instances far surpass us as they have navigated a contrary life.

Scholarly publication

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Screen shot 2012-12-10 at 1.27.38 PMLast week I had my first scholarly journal article published. It is called the Romance Reader and the Public Library and it has been published by The Australian Library Journal Volume 61 No 4 in their Special Issue on Reading.  The abstract is included at the end of my blog. This paper is an amalgam of my Supping with the Devil that is romance fiction talk at the ALIA Biennial Conference and my What the Librarian Did talk at PopCAANZ.

This article is available through public library database subscriptions, university libraries and ALIA membership. It is not free to the web. If you are going through your public library (in Australia) you will need to log on to the “Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre”. Please contact me in the comments if you are having difficulties (or ask your local librarian to show you how to log in). Is there method in my madness? Damn it – yes! I expect you all to have a library card. If you don’t – go out and get one today. This is a blog about romance fiction AND libraries, after all!

Abstract:

Romance fiction, romance authors and readers have been routinely marginalised, in spite of their significant role in contemporary popular culture. Sales figures for the book trade indicate that romance fiction is the most popular of all genres with ebook technologies being led by romance and erotica publishers. Yet, many public libraries have not collected romance fiction or collect only token examples of this genre. Drawing from data in the Australian Romance Readers Association annual survey on reader usage, this paper will discuss how the romance reader accesses their reading choices, impediments to the romance reader accessing reading materials, and the role of the public library and how library practitioners, through Readers’ Advisory practices, can meet the romance reader’s needs.

Bookshelfporn….or is it?

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Close to 18 months ago I was approached by those wonderful erotica authors Rhian Cahill, Lexxie Couper, Jess Dee and Sami Lee over at Down Under Divas to write a guest blog for them. I spent a month struggling to think of something….and then I wrote this:

BookshelvesI’ve been thinking and dreaming about bookshelves for many years. And I think that, for most readers, this is quite normal. So, when I discovered the Tumblr site BooksShelfPorn. I found myself in the midst of ecstasy. Everyday this site gives me the short satisfying pleasure of viewing bookshelves from around the world; in bookshops, libraries, marketplaces and in private homes.

These are images that excite my visual senses, they tease me with their sexy lines, their tight corners and the promise of discovering reading sensations. Soft-focus photographs bring to life the much used, much handled, bookshelves fondled by the hands of many lovers, and the newer buildings, with untouched, erect shelves, standing proud, beckoning, open wide to virgin crowds pouring over their tomes.

These images are just fleeting dreams, and though I fantasize about visiting these bookshelves, running my hand along their banisters, mounting their stairs and losing myself in the sumptuous moment of being surrounded by unknown books, I can only sample some of their wares. Some will leave me wanting, some will not be satisfying and yet others leave me gasping for more… but this voyeurism is only momentary.

However, my own bookshelves, I would never call Bookshelfporn. I have a relationship with my bookshelves, they have served me as I have served them. I have run my hand along my rows of books, gently fingering their spines, lovingly turning their pages, hearing their words whispered in my ears. These wonderful, hard, timber shelves hold up my books that I have chosen to keep close forever, positioning them for my pleasure, my exultation in their words and my revelling in the fortune that they are mine.

Some of my books are old, weathered and loved, other books are newer but all of them have touched my heart, captured my soul, and have allowed me to lose myself in the ecstasy of reading their pages until that breathless moment when the world goes quiet at the sound of a book reaching its end. And then, I gently find a space on my still-rigid shelves who will keep my love safe. For what I feel for them is not gratuitous, it is not a fleeting slamming of books against shelf waiting for the next patron to try them out. It is the thrill, the joy and the comfort that the bookshelves, and all that they carry, are a part of me. For this is Bookshelferotica.

*Originally posted here: http://downunderdivas.wordpress.com/tag/bookshelf-porn/

My books are worth their weight in silver

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Like most homes, we have a small stash of 5 cent, 10 cent and 20 cent coins that pile up in a coin jar. This coin jar is used regularly so there is rarely any more money than five dollars in it. My youngest son can only take canteen money from that jar to pay for his garlic bread or frozen oranges  and I get to use my handful of silver when I head down to my local opshop/charity shop.

Books at my opshop cost anywhere from $1 to $5. I will often throw some coins in my bag and head down to buy myself a book. When I did this today, I was overjoyed to find some Charlotte Lamb, Carole Mortimer, Anne Mather and Penny Jordan reprints on sale. These were reprints from their later books but even these reprints are nearly 10 years old and out of print. I counted my silver and found I had enough money to buy 3 books, all with 2 novels in each binding. I chose the ones I would buy, went to the front of the shop and waited to be served. The woman ahead of me was buying some interior decorating magazines. These were being sold for $1, too. There was a woman hovering to my side and when it came to my turn to be served she said to the woman at the checkout “Give her the Mills & Boon 3 for a dollar. I just want to get rid of them”. It turns out hover woman was the manager.

Now her comment took me aback somewhat. This is an opshop. Is there a place for snobbery in an opshop? I expect a certain egalitarianism from my opshop. I have often seen Target shirts hanging beside Ben Sherman shirts here. I have seen Sportsgirl skirts next to Jigsaw skirts. Frankly, my Mills & Boons, clutched closely to my bosom, had, just moments ago, been sitting on a shelf alongside John Banville’s the Sea and V. S. Naipaul’s Half a Life (ah! the sweet irony that they still sit on those shelves unpurchased). Isn’t shopping at an opshop an opportunity to give to a charity while benefitting from finding an item that is no longer easily purchased from mainstream retailers? For others it is a way to dress and clothe themselves while on a tight budget and for others it is a thumbing it to the big corporates in an attempt to be alternative.

Now this opshop only had 20 M&B titles which is quite a low amount in comparison with the opshop in the neighbouring suburb which has hundreds. And this was a good day! It often has none. Though on the one hand I was quite excited at the lower price so I hurried over to the shelves and chose another 6 books and bought 9 books for $3 (which being doubles means that I scored 18 new books today!) I was also angered. I wanted to shake my fist at the sky and shout “How could you denigrate these wonderfully written books. How could you value them less than a three year old tattered House and Garden”. But I didn’t. I did make a comment about literature snobs after I gave her my pennies.

I am offended on behalf of my reading love. My offense won’t last long as you develop a thick skin as an out-of-the-closet romance reader. But I choose to be affronted when my reading choices meet disdain, scorn and ridicule. I am going to love my books. And they are worth their weight in silver.

Postscript: Like most people, I buy my books from a broad range of places. Retailers, online, markets, opshops and second-hand bookshops. In anticipation of anyone reading this accusing me that if I felt that strongly about Mills & Boon why don’t I buy them new I would like to say that I only buy my in print Mills & Boon at full retail prices. And they are the books that are worth their weight in gold.

Crying

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As a readers’ advisory librarian, you get asked for book recommendations that are sometimes quite difficult to find. For me the hardest was finding romances that would not make my borrowers cry. Read more about my experience over at Love2Read.

Schmoozing with a Smart Bitch and a vulgar amount of name-dropping

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Up until last week, I had not attended a high tea since 2000. 12 years ago I had the good fortune to attend a high tea in the Queen’s Ballroom whilst journeying through the Whitsunday Islands along the North East coast of Australia on a leg of the millenium world cruise of the QE2, as one does. There were marvellous sandwiches, petit fours and loose leaf tea served in fine bone china teacups. It was all very very proper. A string quartet played while well-dressed couples danced to music from the early twentieth century when I was asked if I would like to dance and I found myself doing the cha-cha with a gentleman host beside the Queen’s bust.

This is a travelling highlight for me and I had not felt the need to go to another high tea as it would be a hard act to follow. But last week I finally attended one as Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches Trashy Books was attending along with a number of romance readers, writers and bloggers. It was a loud and raucous afternoon spent with some fabulous women and a lot of fun was had by all. Sarah Wendell was in Sydney as an international guest for the inaugural Genre Convention and I was fortunate enough to be asked to be on a panel discussion with Sarah. The panel was called Not Just a Narrator where, along with Sarah, speculative fiction author Kirstyn McDermott and Harlequin Escape managing editor Kate Cuthbert, we spoke about the many people who promote books and reading, on and offline, from authors, bloggers and librarians *cough* yours truly *cough*. I spoke about the collaborative work NSW librarians and the NSW Readers’ Advisory group are doing to promote readership in developing their monthly themes, facilitating a monthly twitterchat group and blogs Love2Read2012 for the National Year of Reading and next year’s readwatchplay. As the sole librarian speaking at the convention, and only my second non-library talk, I was eager to see how libraries fit into the broader reader, author and book industry discourse. In my opinion, the library aspect was well received and it intersected well with the blogger and author experiences being relayed by the rest of the panel. I think that we need more librarians being part of readers conventions, literary festivals and book fairs as there is a natural overlap for these industries.

The convention itself was fantastic. With a swathe of amazing Australian authors discussing their readership and their craft, the atmosphere was exciting. I heard several of the speakers discussing that we are in an era of writing abundance and it was evident with the number of aspiring, emergent and established authors present and the fabulous editors and publishers that enable their work to be distributed broadly. There were so many fabulous people I spoke with such as Anna Campbell, Shannon Curtis, Christina Brooke, Kat @bookthingo, Rosie @fangbooks, @Rudi_Bee, Kate Eltham, Peter Ball, Denise Rosetti, Bronwyn Parry, Nicky Strickland, Kylie Mason, Haylee and Lilia from Harlequin, Caitlyn Nicholas and many more (and my apologies if I didn’t mention you).

However, I cannot be blasé about Sarah Wendell. Sure, I’d be much cooler if I didn’t gush all over her on my blog. But I have never been a cool kid and I think Sarah was lovely and funny and so generous with her time despite her concerns for her family and friends in the wake of hurricane Sandy. Back in 2008, I gave a Romance 101 presentation at the NSW Readers’ Advisory annual seminar where I introduced the Smart Bitches blog (and a number of other romance literature resources) to over 140 librarians. So to find myself four years later, onstage speaking with Sarah has been a career highlight.

There was no Queen’s ballroom or Queen’s bust, there weren’t any views of the South Pacific or tropical islands and there were no gentlemen hosts or string quartets. But we did have Tim Tams and lamingtons, and there was snark and there was awesomesauce. And it ranks up there with my high seas high tea cha-cha.