According to the latest Knight Agency newsletter, the genres that I and Penny write, romantic comedy and erotic romance, are both Dumpster-diving these days. Out of a score of 5, both romcom and erom are currently rating a 1.75 on the Yes, It’s a Hot, Hot Trend! scale (my terminology there). Yerk. 1 = Long Shot, 2 = Deep Discounts according to TKA agents. Urp. So, yeah, while I am attending RWA National in Nashville this summer, odds look bad that I’ll make NYC in 2011. And I really want to go to NYC. So, tell all your friends and neighbors, forget trends, buy Cindy’s books! Penny’s, too!

However, TKA also sees a bright side:

Now, before you check out our awesome survey, we must issue a disclaimer. Just because our agents said romantic comedy wasn’t at the tip of anyone’s tongue these days — doesn’t mean you should send your beloved manuscript, which just so happens to be romantic comedy, to the scrapper. Mon Dieu! For all we know, you could be the next Jane Austen.

That’s what I like about the ladies over TKA. They always give me hope.

Okay, let’s see, I just submitted a requested contemporary romance manuscript to a publisher, which rates a 3 on the trend scale (“Respectable Mid-Lister”), and now I’m about to return to revising my romantic comedy/mystery. Urp. Make that a “romantic suspense.” Romantic suspense is currently rating 4 “VIP – High in Demand” on the trend scale. Except, um, I think it would be mighty apparent to any editor reading my “romantic suspense” that it’s actually a “romantic comedy/mystery” in sheep’s clothing. Yes, I’m sunk.

The problem with me is I have a light voice. I love writing with a light voice. Even when I write dramatic, there’s a humorous element. And that’s how I like it. So there.

Maybe someday I’ll actually catch a trend at its crest. But it never seems to work out that way. I’m either ahead of the trend or behind it. Penny’s foray into erotic romance is an example. Of course, Penny, darn her, also tends to write light. What’s wrong with the woman?

Time to dust off my paranormal YA idea? Because paranormal rates a 4.5 right now (5 being “Hot Trend-Front of Store Placement!”) and YA paranormal rates a 5. (I have a feeling dark paranormal is doing better than light paranormal, and of course light paranormal would more naturally lend to my voice). Now, remember my post about pacing and trends and books that sell when otherwise they might not (see Monday)? You got it, the book I speak of there is one of the top two selling genres according to the TKA breakdown. But the book still has a huge pacing issue, in my opinion. Which leads me to ask, if its genre weren’t in the top 2, would it have sold?

That’s trends for you, though. They exist to torture writers and satisfy readers. Really, when God created Trends, Trends said, “I need a purpose! A sense of drive! I don’t feel myself when I don’t have a goal.” And God said, “Not to worry, I shall now create writers and you can drive them crazy. Because I have a hankering to brainstorm how to create fig leaves, so I need you to go away.”

Back to trends. The problem comes when publishers buy, buy, buy to take advantage of a hot trend (and who can blame them? They’re businesses, they want to make money) and then the market becomes overly saturated. And then the publishers start dropping authors who are no longer earning them enough money (so they can stay in business), and then these same publishers start looking for the next hot trend and the previously hot authors suddenly find themselves orphaned. Without a publisher. Not because they aren’t talented. But because they haven’t written something that suits the current trend. I have had this happen to so many published writer friends over the last year, I can’t tell you. It’s enough to make me chew on my eyeballs.

Believe me when I say that publishers have no idea what the next hot trend will be. They’re gazing into cloudy crystal balls as much as the rest of us. And writers either follow the trends once they discover them, or kinda/sorta attempt to follow them but realize their heart isn’t in it. Or they eat a lot of packaged macaroni and continue to write what they love.

Like me.

Why?

Because I’m dense. And that’s how I like it.

Yes, you heard it here – probably last. The Kindle is finally available in Canada. Well, we have to buy it from the U.S. Kindle store, but the point is, we can finally buy it. And, depending on where you live in the Great White North, we can use the wireless technology to download books, too.

I checked the service area for my town, and the wireless technology IS available. You know what this means, don’t you? Anyone who wants to buy me a Kindle and ship it to me for Christmas can now do so. Feel free!

In other news, only two days remain in my 2009 BOX ‘O BOOKS HOLIDAY GIVE-AWAY. For details on how to enter, click here.

An innocent posting (of mine) to Facebook last weekend sparked a bit of debate, so I thought I’d bring it here. Not the debate necessarily. Just the questions. You see, I’ve been harboring a bit of Christmas-decorating guilt. Because I haven’t done any yet. And I probably wouldn’t think of doing any if not for My Liege and Youngest Son doing it for me. Doing the outside decorating, that is. The blow-up Santa on the motorcycle is on the carport roof, the lights are on the house. But I’m not, no way, not even considering, putting up our Christmas tree until at least December 15th. I’ve never been able to fathom putting up the tree earlier than 2 weeks prior to the big day. Part of this is because we use live trees, and I like them to last until after January 1st. We put our tree in the family room in the basement, because that’s where the monster TV and fireplace is, and My Liege does love his fire every night. We have a huge living room, but when we first moved into this house it served as a living room/piano room/partial dining room AND office (complete with two desks). There was no room for a tree. So the stockings went on the upstairs fireplace and the tree went downstairs. My kids grew up like that, so that’s how they want the tradition to remain. I can’t argue.

Thanks to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, it has recently been revealed to me that it might be something of an American tradition to to do all your Christmas decorating—including putting up the tree—on Thanksgiving weekend a month before Christmas. In some ways, the idea makes me jealous. American Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season, so dispensing with the turkey one day, observing Black Friday the next, then decorating for Christmas makes sense. For me as a Canadian, however, it doesn’t make sense until I’m staring the Christmas countdown in the face, and that’s always ten days before.

Now, some say you can put up your tree a month early even if it’s a live tree, that proper watering will keep it going until Christmas. Thanks, but I don’t want to try that with a roaring fire in the same room every evening. The other option that is becoming more and more popular is the artificial Christmas tree. Twenty years ago, I found fake trees laughable. I mean, they looked pretty darn fake. Now, they look great. I can easily see the argument for an artificial tree (which I’ll refer to as fake from now on for the sake of my typing fingers). They can go up earlier and you don’t have to worry about them catching on fire or your toddlers playing in the water or eating the needles that fall on the floor. If you buy a good fake tree, I’m sure you could expect to keep it for twenty years before dumping it in the landfill. Whereas, with a live tree, you replace it every year.

We get our live trees from a Christmas tree farm down the road (that’s a picture from last year). The farm is within walking distance, but the trees are up a steep hill and we always seem to have to go to the top to find THE one. That’s enough walking without needing to haul the tree all the way back to the house without benefit of the pickup. Before we discovered the Christmas tree farm, we’d cut a live tree from our woodlot or a piece of property we once owned, or one of my dad’s properties. We called it juvenile thinning. Now, it’s much easier to just visit the tree farm, which didn’t grow anything but dry yellow grass and cow pies before it came into existence. Every year around about this coming weekend, we go and flag which tree we want. Then, when we go back around the 15th, we’re rest assured there’s still a tree left to buy. The tree goes up until New Year’s Day, and then we take it into town for chipping. For getting a live tree, I figure the way we do it could qualify as “green.”

I didn’t realize until I posted about live versus fake trees on Facebook that there’s a bit of a controversy over the environmental greenness of Christmas trees. I can see arguments on both sides, so I thought I’d do a little survey here.

1. Do you have a fake or live tree?
2. What’s the reason for your choice? Are you motivated by environmentalism or something else?
3. Are you staunchly against live or fake trees? Why?
4. How early do you put up your tree?
5. When do you take it down?
6. If Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October, why can’t we kick off our Christmas holiday season then?
7. If not for Halloween, would we?
8. Can you imagine drinking eggnog for two freaking months?

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.

Harlequin Horizons is now known as DellArte Press. While I haven’t had time to fully explore either the DellArte website or eHarlequin for evidence, apparently there is no longer any mention of Harlequin on the DellArte website, and there is no mention of DellArte on the Harlequin website. Excellent!

I haven’t heard any news about whether Harlequin form rejection letters will still steer rejected writers to DellArte, as was the original intention with Horizons… Let’s hope not.

How did the corporation arrive at the new name for their vanity publishing venture? Obviously, I can’t speak for HQ/TorStar, but if you search DellArte on the ‘Net, you’ll find references to “Commedia dell’arte,” Italian improvisational theater stretching from the 16th century later referred to as the Harlequinade. The Harlequin (or Arlechinno) is listed as a comic servant character in this form of theater. A graphic of the harlequin is also a Harlequin logo and appears on every Harlequin category romance (just the Harlequins, not the Silhouettes). He’s the little jester guy in the white diamond on the cover and spine.

The DellArte website still refers to their services as “self-publishing.” In another area, they call it “assisted self-publishing.” Granted, “vanity publishing” doesn’t sound very good. “Predator publishing” (which authors on some loops have suggested would make a better fit) sounds worse (for HQ).

Frankly, if HQ decides against referring heartbroken writers to DellArt in Harlequin/Silhouette rejection letters, I’ll be happy. Predator/vanity/assisted self-publishing has been around for decades (centuries?). Contrary to what some vanity publishing websites would have browsers believe, it is not a new concept. I first heard of vanity publishing back in 1979 (I know, hard to believe I could learn such things while still in the womb, but that’s what brilliance will get you). I think the “new” in the concept is that clever websites can appeal to a writer’s ego and reinforce the myth that most writers pay to have their work published, which is not the case. Back in 1979, it wasn’t anywhere near as easy to obtain information on how to get published as it is now. Therefore, there wasn’t as much misinformation floating around, either.

Not that I wish for pre-Internet days…

I admit that during this whole debacle I couldn’t help but wonder if including the Harlequin name in the “assisted self-publishing” venture wasn’t a clever P.R. move to obtain lots and lots and lotsa press. With a back-up plan that if the crud hit the windmill they could do just what they have—remove the Harlequin name from the venture. Meanwhile, all the publicity is still out there, and “the only bad publicity is no publicity,” as they say.

Thoughts?

Hah, tricked you with the title change, didn’t I? Usually it’s Tell ME Tuesday.

You can go ahead and tell me, anyway. How’s the writing going? Life? Any good news/bad news to report?

After the blogging kerfuffle of last week, I needed a little break. Pretty much waiting to hear what’s next from Horizons Vs. RWA. Plus, I had the H1N1 shot yesterday. It wasn’t a bad experience, but it did make me feel slightly lethargic. I took advantage of my brain-deadness to do something that makes me feel even more braindead—compiling a fiscal year end for delivery to our accountant. No sense wasting the H1N1 glow on something ambitious like writing.

Last night I watched the Thanksgiving episode of Dexter for a second time. My Liege had an early Sunday night, so I watched it myself then. All I can say is, “Wowzer!” The way this season started out, I thought, “Ho hum, another serial killer introduced in the form of Trilogy, Dexter will be trying to figure out a way to get rid of him without revealing the monster within throughout the whole season, and then he’ll succeed.” But the Thanksgiving episode contained a number of Wowzers!, the little switcheroo at the ending being the best one. I thought I knew what was going to happen at the end of the episode…that Trinity would begin a new killing cycle with J’s new girlfriend. Did not see the twist coming at all.

Still waiting for the onion that is Rita to be peeled. I have theories that drive Youngest Son nuts. “Not everyone on the show has to turn out to have some sort of psycho past, Mom.” Sure, but Rita’s gotta have a darn compelling reason to act like a Stepford Wife. I swear, the voice alone drives me insane.

On a side note, is anyone getting flashbacks to Dick from Third Rock from the Sun while watching John Lithgow as Trinity? I keep expecting that guy who could talk to the Big Giant Head to show up…

It’s NaNoWriMo time! (National Novel Writing Month for those not in the know). I’m not NaNo’ing this year. In fact, I’ve only done participated once. It was fun, but I’m deep into revisions on the first of two manuscripts. No time to NaNo. Yano?

Are you NaNo’ing? Why or why not? If you are participating this year, what are you working on? Did you honestly not write a word of your manuscript before November 1st? Just planned? Or have you tweaked the NaNo write-50K-in-one-month-without-editing parameters to suit your personal creative process? I wouldn’t blame you if you have.

It’s the first week. Four to go. Good luck!

The other night I saw MY SISTER’S KEEPER with my mom and the Little Pisser. My mom lent me the book by Jodi Picoult two weeks ago, but naturally I forgot to read it until I realized the movie was looming (um, don’t visit the link to Jodi’s website, if you were thinking about it, until you read my spoiler alert, down below). So I ate the book with my brain, finishing this weekend. Usually, I’m disappointed in movies made from books. But MY SISTER’S KEEPER, the movie, which was pretty decent, was a good representation of the novel. The movie even kept the multiple first-person viewpoints of the book intact.

Sure, the movie wandered from the book here and there, but not in a way that bothered me. Even the ending didn’t bother me, but…okay, I’m going to have to put this part in white font, because it’s a spoiler. If you’ve read the novel and plan to see the movie, DON’T READ this spoiler. If you’ve seen the movie and now really want to read the novel, DON’T HIGHLIGHT the big white section below. If you don’t give a rip and want to read the spoiler, anyway, highlight the white section with your cursor. My words will magically appear! (I am truly amazing sometimes).

SPOILER ALERT!! (Just in case I wasn’t clear).

The movie changes the ending of the book big time. I can kind of understand why the producers, the director, or whoever makes these decisions, did change the ending. In the novel, the ending was a complete surprise to me. It worked, on the page, but it might have come across a bit too soap-operish on the big screen. You see, in the movie, the wrong sister dies.

In the novel, the sister with cancer doesn’t die. The courtroom scenes play out pretty much like they do in the novel, except for one part in the novel where Anna, the sister without cancer, tells her lawyer that what she wished for the future was to see her sister alive in ten years. That she would gladly give her sister her kidney if her sister would allow her to.

Then the lawyer and Anna drive off in the pouring rain, get in a car accident, and Anna dies. Yes, Anna dies. Well, she’s brain dead, hooked up to machines, and Kate, the sister who needs the transplant is still alive. The parents are trying to decide what to do when the lawyer rushes in to announce that Anna wanted to give her sister the kidney, Kate will die without the surgery, so sign the organ donor forms.

The novel ends with an epilogue set ten years later. Kate survived her cancer and has gone on to live a rewarding life. Now, you tell me, isn’t that a huge departure from the film, where Anna doesn’t give Kate her kidney and Kate dies?

End of Spoiler.

Spoiler P.S. What I discuss in the spoiler is addressed on Jodi Picoult’s website and includes her thoughts on it, so I’m warning you, don’t visit her website link if you don’t want to know.

I don’t want to discuss MY SISTER’S KEEPER, the movie, or even MSK, the novel, because I don’t want to ruin it for others. But the experience got me thinking about other novels to film. Which have worked for you and which haven’t? I was super disappointed in the film adaptation of SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD. I read the book before the movie. I loved the book and couldn’t have given two hoots about the film. However, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, I saw the movie before I read the book, and I enjoyed both greatly. FIRST BLOOD, I’ve never read the book, and I thought the movie was great. So maybe I should stop reading books before seeing the movie. But that’s hard to do when you don’t know which books will get made into movies.

Do you prefer to read the book and then see the movie, or vice versa? Does it drive you nuts when the movie veers extensively from the book? Or can you separate them in your mind and enjoy both versions for what they are? 

If you’re interested in sharing your thoughts with the director and screenwriter about the book-to-film process of MY SISTER’S KEEPER, you can do so here.