For every romance writer who currently has a mad-on for Nicholas Sparks because of his perceived arrogance, here’s a link to funny instructions on How to Write a Nicholas Sparks Movie on cracked.com. First, read this quote from The News-Herald Blogs, and then read the funny instructions. Well, I think they’re funny.

Quote from News-Herald Blogs:

“I don’t write romance novels.” His preferred terminology: “Love stories — it’s a very different genre … (Romances) are all essentially the same story: You’ve got a woman, she’s down on her luck, she meets the handsome stranger who falls desperately in love with her, but he’s got these quirks, she must change him, and they have their conflicts, and then they end up happily ever after.”

Mr. Sparks says he doesn’t write romance novels. I’ve never read one of his novels, but I have watched a couple of movie versions, and he’s right. He doesn’t write romance novels. He does write “love stories.” There’s no guarantee that a love story will end happily. Love Story didn’t. Bridges of Madison County didn’t. And neither do Nicholas Sparks’s novels.

Romance novels do end happily.

Wouldn’t it be nice if some “love stories” did? Otherwise, the love stories just get predicable. Don’t they?

Whether Mr. Sparks writes formulaic fiction is something I can’t address with any degree of authority…because I haven’t read his books. I have to admit, though, that having at least one character die at the end of the movie version of every story a writer pens does sound somewhat formulaic to moi.

The article on cracked.com points out several other “essentially the same story”isms. If you need a laugh, check it out.

So, why do you think Nicholas Sparks books get made into movies while the vast, vast, vast majority of romance novels don’t? Is it because people die in his books, so they aren’t “formulaic”? Is it because leaving the audience crying throughout a movie version of one of your books is cathartic for them? Is it because he’s a man writing books mainly intended for a female audience, instead of being a woman writing books mainly intended for a female audience?

I rather think it’s the latter. But then I’m jaded.

I’ve decided with much reluctance to step away from my (now former) Golden Heart 2007 finalists (“The 007s”) group blog, Nobody Writes It Better. If you’ve visited the blog lately and noticed that the posts are really, really old, that’s because they are. The blog experienced a bit of a disaster in late December in the way of a nasty virus that was whipping its way around the web and somehow made its way onto the site and infected several of the members’ computers, including mine. Ol’ Delbert. May he rest in pieces. This happened just as I was going on vacation, so I had to leave the fixes to other members of the management team. Our blog designer fixed the problem, but then it seemed to reoccur, which was horribly confusing, as we didn’t know how it was happening. We had over 30 members when we started blogging only last June. The planning and design process of the blog occurred for another several months before that. Well, once the blog was fixed, it seemed like a good time for members to take stock of their involvement. And the exodus began. About ten members still remain with the blog, but it’s undergoing a transition period so currently is inoperative.

Everything in me wanted to stay with the blog (I have a problem giving up), but as one of the members of the initial management team, I’d put hours and hours and countless hours into not only the design of the blog, but also the set-up and several aspects of the continuing maintenance. I just couldn’t keep it up. I also discovered along the way that I’m not really suited to group blogging. With 31 or 32 members, we had to keep a pretty tight schedule, and scheduled blogging makes me feel…pressured. Yes, I only blogged every 6 weeks, however, unlike here, I didn’t feel like I could just whip out a post. No, I had to take more time, say something important or clever. And trying to be clever, as we all know, is stressful. It’s better when the cleverness just pours out of us naturally!

Would I consider joining another group blog? Yes, maybe, we’ll see. It depends. It would depend on a number of factors. But right now I need a break.

Regardless of who stays with the blog and who has decided to leave, we are all still 007 Bond Girl sisters. We’ll still cheer each other on, celebrate our successes and commiserate with our lows. We don’t need a group blog to do that.

How do you feel about group blogs? Do you read them? Do you participate in one? What about it works for you (or doesn’t)?

I visited Natalie Damschroder’s blog the other day to discover that she’d passed on The Circle of Friends Blog Award to little ol’ moi. Thanks, Natalie!

You know what this means, don’t you?

(1) She reads my blog on a nearly daily basis

(2) She enjoys my wit and intelligence

(3) She wants me to buy her a drink in Nashville

(4) She wants to buy ME a drink in Nashville

(5) She is constantly amazed at our mutual GMTA. Excellent. Because I am, too.

I’m pleased to have the award. The shade of blue looks so wonderful on my website that a little, evil part of me isn’t sure I should pass on the button to others. But I will. Because I enjoy blog-hopping. I don’t do it as much as I used to, what with Facebook and Twitter and those nasty things called deadlines getting in the way. I wish I had more time to blog-hop, because I think it’s much more personal, shall we say, than truncated Twitter posts. But there are several blogs that I visit nearly every day (even if I don’t always comment) and their authors deserve a look-see. So blog-hop-on over to:

Avery Beck

Edie Ramer

HelenKay Dimon

Maureen McGowan

Carina Press editor Angela James blogs about why publishers don’t often send personalized rejections. Well worth a read.

My favorite personalized rejection over the last year? “Your story made it to our ‘perhaps’ pile, but sadly we can’t publish them all.” It made me laugh. The editor also apologized for the length of time it took to receive a reply, which is always nice. (No, it wasn’t Angela James!)

Do you have a favorite personalized rejection line? Paraphrase it for me, baby.

Seeing as my buddy, my pal, my lifelong friend (and most excellent critique partner, or “cp” as we like to call each other) Kate St. James doesn’t have a blog (for shame!), I promised to pass this along for her.

Kate’s blogging in the contemporary area of RomConInc today! And giving away a copy of Secrets 28: SENSUAL CRAVINGS, which includes her most excellent erotic romance novella, Kiss Me at Midnight.

Leave a comment for Kate at RomCon for your chance to win!

I’m blogging at Nobody Writes It Better today…about cats and Christmas trees. I even wrote a Christmas cat poem! Hop on over to read it.

Today’s the last day of the Super Secret Santa Give-Away over at Nobody Writes It Better as well. Click here to learn how to enter. Barbara Wallace is drawing the winner’s name later today, and Gail Fuller will announce the winner on the NWIB blog tomorrow.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

My group blog, Nobody Writes It Better, is holding The Super Secret Santa Give-Away from now until Christmas Eve, with the winner announced on Christmas Day. Several authors are participating, with some of us donating copies of our books and some of us donating gifts. Each author will mail her book/gift to the winner independently, so every time you visit your mailbox, you might find another present therein. Sounds like fun, no? For my part, I’m donating a copy of BORROWING ALEX.

Visit The Super Secret Santa Give-Away for details on how to enter. (Note: comments to this post, while appreciated, do not enter you in the contest. Visit the blog and follow the directions there).

I’ve installed a (supposedly) cool Twitter plug-in for WordPress called Tweetmeme that (supposedly) allows me or a blog reader to easily tweet my blog posts. You can see the icon at the bottom of each blog (it says “tweet” on a green background that magically matches my color scheme—honest, I didn’t adjust it! It came that way).

The problem? I can’t get the plug-in to work. Whenever I try to tweet a post, I get the error, “Failed to resolve URL for tweet.” In my usual ignoramus way, I have no idea what this means. I’m contacting Someone Far Wiser in hopes they have the answer. But because they are SFW, they probably didn’t encounter this issue on their own blog and I’m probably SNAFU’ed. But what else is new?

In my defense, this is the first plug-in I’ve ever installed. Maybe I screwed up (noooo, can’t be!).

I just upgraded my WordPress. Maybe Tweetmeme hasn’t caught up yet.

So, if you want to tweet one of my blog posts, click on the green “tweet” button at the bottom of the post in question and give it a whirl. If it doesn’t work, blame your Thanksgiving turkey. Even if his name isn’t Vincent.

If you’re reading this post in the far future and don’t see the cute little green “tweet” button, that’s because I could never get it to work and gave up.

If you’re reading this post in the far past and don’t see the cute little green “tweet” button, that’s because I hadn’t installed it yet! So no time-traveling for you, my dear blog readers, or this post won’t make sense.

UPDATE: Saturday a.m. I was able to tweet a blog post today, so I’m no longer SNAFU’ed. Not sure what I did right this morning that I did wrong yesterday. That it was tweeted isn’t showing up on the icon, but that doesn’t matter. I’m going for efficiency here.