Space Opera!

I don’t think I’ve told a whole lot of people about this, but I got into writing to write what was then called “futuristic romances.” I was going to redefine the subgenre the way Professor Tolkien redefined fantasy.

[Crickets chirping]

Okay, so I haven’t done it. Here’s why.

Back in the middle of the second Clinton Administration, during a period of ardent personal ignorance in the ways of the (publishing) world, I had the whole thing planned. I’d write one—count that—one historical romance. Then, once I had my foot in the door, I’d switch to futuristics. Woo hoo, the first step in Sherry’s Grand Strategy for World Domination.

Remember the Improbability Drive from THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY? If I could build a star drive that runs on naiveté and wishful thinking, I’d be halfway to Alpha Centauri already.

When I learned that once you publish in a subgenre, people kind of want you to keep writing it, I clutched my heart. I had a special hatred for research that people usually reserved for colonoscopies. And I never had any ideas for historicals beyond the current work-in-progress. But somehow, I managed to churn out historicals year in, year out, without my head visibly exploding. So I said, alright, I’ll write both historicals and science fiction romances. And wrote only historicals.

But now, times, they be a-changin’.

Last weekend, I sent off a three-chapter proposal to my agent. Science fiction romances suck in that they require a plot, and I’m weak on plots. But oh, baby, what freedom after a steady diet of nothing but the Queen’s English all these years. Here’s my personal favorite snippet from the prologue, where the hero and the heroine were about to engage in, ahem, unmentionable activities:

“Say ‘fuck me,’” he ordered.
“Fuck you,” she replied with equal courtesy.

Halleluiah! All praise to vulgar vernaculars. There are no two other words in the English language—with the possible exception of “I’m pregnant”—that pack quite such a wallop.

And this bit, from the first chapter, when our not-quite-amorous lovers reunite after many years. Watch out for another potent two-word combination.

“You look like shit,” she said.
He rubbed a knuckle along his jaw. “And feel even worse. You, on the other hand…”
He looked her over, once, twice. “Bitch goddess.”

Oh, yes, baby. Something else you can’t say in a historical.

I already write dark, powerful heroines in my historical romances. I hope science fiction romances would allow me the freedom to make them even darker and more powerful. The above proposal has just regular human beings. But I am intrigued by the concept of, say, a genetically modified woman who is physically much stronger than any normal man and made to kill. What can she do with that strength? What has she done with it? And what kind of man would have the big, brass balls required to go up against her?

Hmmm.

Update in the Mighty Struggle for a Good Shag: I have found The Way. But alas, The Way will require even more rewrites than originally scheduled. In fact, The Way changes the whole dynamic of the story. Forget short hiatuses. I am taking a medium hiatus from the blog to devote the rest of December to DELICIOUS. So have a great, memorable holiday, everyone. See you in 2007.

Give Me Sex or Give me Death

Apologies to Patrick Henry.

Way back—gosh, was it only six months ago?—when I sent off the partial for SCHEMES OF LOVE to Kristin Nelson, I wrote an accompanying cover letter that contained a “one paragraph blurb that summarizes your work and highlights your pitch” that she specified in her request.

Not being shy, I informed Kristin in the cover letter that my romance novel contained the best hook of all: mandatory sex. Yep, in those exact words. The heroine wants a divorce, the hero insists on an heir before he’d allow the divorce to go through. And we’ve got one very hot book.

There is a reason that romances with setups that stipulate mandatory sex—marriages of convenience, girl selling herself to the highest bidder, etc. etc.—remain perennially popular. We are, or at least I am, hardwired to enjoy the frisson we get when we know something steamy is afoot.

And for that very reason, I am usually drawn to write historical romances that take place in what I call a hermetically sealed bedroom. Hero, meet Heroine, meet Four-poster-bed. What do you mean you don’t know what to do? You are married, aren’t you? And even if you aren’t, you’ve signed a deal in blood to boink for three months straight. I have it right here in chapter three, so get on with it. And neither of you are allowed out until your cynical black hearts break a little bit.

I’m sure you see now why I was pulling my hair out over DELICIOUS. No mandatory sex. This couple, for perverse reasons that drive my muse to the opium den, do not need to sleep together. They want to, but they don’t need to, and the reasons against it are legion, and all I’ve got, in my puny armory of writerly devices, is whatever overriding passion I can foment in them.

And then, because I am a charter member of Romance Writers against Deliberate Character Manipulation, I can’t make the heroine run outside during a freezing downpour just so the hero can find her and strip her of her sodden night rail. Or put the hero in a hallucinating high fever, because damn it, she is his cook, not his maid or housekeeper, and she won’t be the one standing by his bedside should he yank someone down on top of himself. And even when I abandon my principles and have her get tipsy, he wouldn’t take advantage of her inebriation. What has the world come to, I ask you?

So what is a writer of reputedly hot romances to do? Write, I guess, and pray, and stake out all the opium dens nearby in case her muse wobbles out, ready to be taken home for some tender loving care.

Stay tuned for irregular future updates in The Mighty Struggle for a Good Shag.