Susan
Mallery Speaks to Librarians about the Appeal of Romance
New York Times
bestselling author Susan Mallery was asked to speak this summer at the American
Library Association national conference in Anaheim, California, on a panel
called “Isn’t It Romantic?” Mallery’s latest book, SUMMER NIGHTS (Fool’s Gold
book 8) is dedicated to librarians who have done so much to introduce readers
to her books. This is the speech she prepared.
The appeal in romance is that our
books offer readers a celebration of community. Romances are all about
connecting. Sure the boy-meets-girl part is fun and exciting, but often what
really brings a reader back again and again are the connections made within the
novel.
Most romances happen in a larger
context of relationships. Families and friends play an important role. We want
to experience falling in love with a hunky guy, but we also want a sense of
belonging. The most popular books feature a cast of usually like able, sometimes
annoying, generally realistic characters who are amazingly like people we know.
Or people we get on an emotional level.
These other characters, sometimes
seemingly unimportant, can be the glue that holds our books together. Our hero
and heroine are revealed through their relationships with secondary characters.
The gruff solitary man who unexpectedly cares for a wounded puppy wins our
heart forever. The exhausted single mother staying up until midnight to frost
cupcakes for her son's first grade class reminds us of ourselves. While the
romance is central to the story and the reason we think we read "those
kind of books" I believe the real truth is we love the sense of community
a romance brings to the table. The sexy guy on the cover draws us in, but the
heroine's relationship with her sarcastic best friend turns out to be just as
satisfying and meaningful.
The majority of
romance readers are women. Women are usually the keepers of relationships in
their lives and the lives of those around them. We are the ones who maintain
the friendships, remember birthdays, make sure each of our children has a
moment to feel special. We can spend a weekend with our girlfriends and when we
get home, still think of something we could have told them. When I travel to a
writers’ conference and hang out with my writer friends for days, then return
home and get a call from one of them, my husband can't believe there's anything
left to say. I've tried to explain there's always more to talk about but he
just shakes his head.
In our lives we want friends and
family. We want connection. Romances offer that in our fiction. We can meet
women we want to have lunch with and men we want to fall in love with. Romance
isn't man against nature or man against himself. It's man and woman falling in
love in a much bigger context. One or both of them have a family, there are
friends, coworkers, pets. It's a real world populated by the funny and the
strange and if done well, it's a world we want to return to again and again.
For years now, romances have been
written in groups. Trilogies, sisters, brothers, a band of warriors. Sherrilyn
Kenyon gives us her immortal warriors. Debbie Macomber gives us Cedar Cove. In
between lie stories only limited by the imaginations of the writers who create
them. It is the combination of the familiar and the unknown that draws us back.
I started writing in category
romance. I wrote about 80 books for Silhouette. I wrote about sisters and
cousins and brothers and even neighboring sheik kingdoms. The longer a series
went on, the more readers responded. When I moved into writing single title, I
continued with families. One day a very successful writer friend sat me down
and said, "Write about a town. It's limitless."
From that very
intelligent advice, my Fool's Gold series was born. www.foolsgoldca.com It's a small
town set in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I started with the idea of a
town suffering a man shortage, which gave me the chance to put women in
non-traditional jobs. I decided to write the books in trilogies, with the idea
each trilogy would stand on its own, allowing readers to join at any point. By
the second Fool's Gold trilogy I'd realized the man shortage wasn't that
interesting, but the non-traditional jobs were, so modifications were made.
Reader response has been terrific.
They love the town. Mayor Marsha, California's longest serving mayor, is a fan
favorite. I keep track of previous heroes and heroines using a data base and
often feature births in subsequent books. I use social media to increase the
level of connection with my readers. We have the usual interactions, but there
is another level on my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/susanmallery. Readers help me
name characters, pick careers and suggest new businesses for the towns. When a
former heroine is due to give birth, readers usually vote on the gender of the
baby and offer name suggestions. Next year three new businesses will open in
Fool's Gold and each one of them is the result of something a reader said to
me.
A romance can take place nearly
anywhere, in any time. We have smart ass heroines who rescue themselves, timid
virgins and librarians who dance on bars in our books. Every romance writer has
a specific vision for what she wants to write, but what we all have in common
is connection. Sisters who are drawn together because of a dying parent.
Vampires fighting enemies while protecting the women they love. Handsome dukes
who marry the most unlikely of spinsters, drawn to her against all odds, in
part because she takes care of her younger siblings.
In romances we find the relationships
that matter most to us personally. Those who adore babies in books can be
endless entertained by the antics of newborns. If you prefer sexy, sassy
heroines, there are dozens of writers to give you exactly that. The appeal of
romance is how the stories speak to us so personally. They show us women who
are brave, who overcome odds, who always have a snappy comeback and in the end
find not just love, but also a place to belong. Romances celebrate the very
best of us, and that ideal state is often illustrated in the connections our
characters make with each other.
Romances are a reading escape that
also touches the heart. Romances affirm what is most important to each of
us—the people we love, who love us back.
I want to Thank both Susan and her assistant Jenel for making this speech available to me and my followers.
