ELIZABETH'S DAUGHTER AND THE REAL WORLD OF FICTION

In case you thought I was kidding about the Maxwell dinner conversations, let me introduce you to my daughter, Heather Maxwell.

In addition to holding an advanced degree in international relations, speaking several languages, and being the unhappy owner of the Knee from Hell (seven surgeries and counting), Heather is the author of two novels of romantic suspense: WHEN THE STORM BREAKS (Walden/Border’s winner of the best-selling romantic suspense debut) and NO ESCAPE.

When not experimenting with the wonders of orthopedic surgery, Heather works on her third novel, ONCE BURNED.

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You probably aren’t going to believe this, but my blog topic and my father’s were developed completely independently of one another. In fact, I didn’t read his contribution until I was nearly done with my own. I could preen and say something like “great minds think alike” but, in reality, it is probably more a case of one anarchist showing up at the institution she wishes to torch and finding someone already there with a can of gasoline in hand. Though since my father is quite the diplomat, I’m sure he’s going after the system piece by piece. Like the good little insurgent that I am, I’d love to stand back and watch the conflagration. But diplomacy has its place. I should know—six years of my life and many thousands of hours studying international relations and the politics of developing countries must have been good for something.

Let’s assume that Evan Maxwell’s blog will, indeed, end up being the brilliant piece of market analysis of future trends that I believe it is. If so, it flies in the face of conventional wisdom within the New York publishing industry. Why should I care about NYC, you ask? After all, chances are you’re sitting in the comfort of your living room somewhere outside the NY metro area. Furthermore, a recent RWA survey of romance readers ( http://www.storyforu.com/statisticsnew.htm) shows that about one in four residents of the Western, Southern, and Mid-Western regions of the US reads romance/women’s fiction, compared to just over one in ten in the Northeast (where NYC reigns supreme in terms of influence and population numbers). So why should we care what happens in NY?

Because NYC is not just the heart of the publishing industry—it is the spinal cord, trunk, limbs, and very brain of it, as well. There are only a few “major” players in the North American publishing industry that have their headquarters, or even offices, outside of the New York metro area.

As a result, the overwhelming majority of publishing executives, editors, and sales & marketing staff physically lives and works in one of the world’s largest cities. That city, the quintessential urban environment, very much shapes the lives of these people. Some were born and raised there, others sought out the bright lights of the big city as ambitious young adults. Often the best and brightest in their classes at school, they are no different from the smart young graduates who gravitate to big cities everywhere. They went to college for degrees in liberal arts and business, and left eager to apply what they had learned in their literature, sociology, marketing, and statistics courses.

Having roomed with two business majors all through college, I can tell you that the marketing and sales coursework of business administration degree programs everywhere are pretty much uniform. Business is taught as a science, with accepted laws, corollaries, theories, and doctrines. Those teachings guide the daily actions of people involved in any business that is driven by marketing and sales—and the publishing industry is, above all else, about the numbers.

But you may wonder why I care about this business stuff. I’ve slipped the leash but good, escaped from my Fortune 500 corporate cubicle, and am now making my way as a published author. An artist—okay, those are my words, hold still while I stuff them in your mouth. Anyway, you might think that as a self-employed author I don’t have to be concerned with business doctrines and sales & marketing precepts anymore. Heck, I don’t even have to follow the rules, right? I get to sit in front of a computer and create whatever I want. Rules? Who cares about those puppies when you’re queen of the world—or at least the fictional world that resides on your hard drive?

Ahem. I do. I don’t want to—really, I don’t. But I must make a living like everyone else. I want my career as a writer to grow, so I need to navigate the publishing industry as carefully as I made my way through the business world. Actually, a lot MORE carefully than I did during my days as a project manager. A more opinionated and insubordinate employee you will never find. I didn’t do it to be a bad little corporate drone; I did it because I was passionate about fighting for my projects and the people working with me. I wanted every project to be successful, and when I saw impediments to success, I called them out. Loudly. Again, this was not for the perverse thrill of watching my boss’s face turn purple while a tic throbbed madly in his temple. That was merely a great fringe benefit. In reality, I just wanted to speak truth to power. My truth. A lot of it, and quite often.

And guess what? Power gets tired of it. Power crushes little bugs of truth like dim-witted cockroaches sitting in the middle of the kitchen counter in the broad light of day. Heck, I’m probably slandering cockroaches here. At least they’re smart enough to dive for cover when a giant shoe hovers over their heads. But those who speak their truth to powerful people tend to think of that truth as a shield, one which will protect them when they charge into the corporate conference room.

Good gravy, what a moron I was.

Since leaving the business world rather, um, precipitously, I’ve come to realize that there are many truths out there. As many truths as there are people to interpret them. I’ve learned the value of looking for and understanding other peoples’ truths, for they are as deeply and passionately held as my own.

The publishing industry has its own truths, and these are held to be self-evident. Of direct impact on my career is the one that is presented as the guiding principle of women’s fiction: international settings don’t sell. The corollary: Readers of women’s fiction want characters and storylines that they can identify with, and locales they can picture themselves in while they commute to their jobs each day. That does not include so-called “exotic settings” and confrontations with dangerous international criminal gangs, for example.

Another corollary: Women’s fiction readers don’t like novels that have a backdrop of socio-political conflict that can’t be fully resolved within the span of 300-500 pages. Specifically, this publishing truism holds that things like international crime syndicates and the vagaries of nation-states can never be “fixed” in a book. Or even a series of them. Following on this corollary, many folks in the publishing industry believe that readers simply don’t want to be faced with “big” and “ugly” problems that can’t ever be believably eliminated—problems like the trafficking of human beings, terrorism, war, the upheavals of nation-building, rogue states with nuclear weapons, or the so-called Clash of Civilizations.

Yet all these things make my heart go pitter-patter with the passionate desire to fix them, even if only within the confines of my novel. I’m sure this does the Jesuits at my Georgetown alma mater proud, but boy does it make my life difficult when I try to write within the boundaries of my chosen genre. Boundaries which are defined by the deeply held beliefs of the publishing industry.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that these horrible modern realities thrill me. They don’t. That doesn’t mean I can’t stare them in the face, though, and call them what they are.

But where the publishing industry looks at a bleak international backdrop and sees a dark reality that has no place in women’s fiction, I see an opportunity. An opportunity to explore large themes and important issues—ones that have a real and undeniable impact on each and every one of us as citizens of the global community. I see an opportunity to stare evil in the face. To allow a handful of my characters to defeat a small part of that evil between the covers of my book.

These are my truths, and I have spoken them to power before. And I got squashed, too. Metaphorically speaking.

But if I learned nothing else in my previous work incarnation, it was the need to understand that others have their own passionate truths. I understand that in the practical, emotionless world of business, the only important thing is sales. That is the truth that is held above all others. And that is supposedly the only thing that drives the decisions on which authors get published and which storylines will be supported by the individual publishing houses.

Romance fiction publishers, who are sitting on a $1.2 billion industry, are certain that they are meeting the needs of their customers.
Where have we heard that before? Does anyone remember the time when the romance genre was only Harlequin serials? Is it that readers truly loved only British settings, British authors, arrogant men and swooning virgins? That was Harlequin’s belief, and they supported it by pointing to their great sales numbers. Then an American upstart, Silhouette, came along. They hired American authors who wrote about modern American settings and sensibilities, and they blew Harlequin’s truth away.

Don’t even get me started on perceived truths for historical romances and their covers. Remember the bodice rippers of the old days, with covers so bad readers either ripped them off or stuffed their books inside something else to hide them?

Ditto for why romantic suspense vanished after Mary Stewart, not to reappear for a generation.

And let’s not even mention how hard it was for paranormal romances to get their little furred and clawed feet in the door.

In other words, what’s selling now is not necessarily the only thing people would buy. Given a choice, consumers will never fail to surprise and amaze those who seek to meet their needs.

Could today’s market, even with its comparatively broad base of offerings, suffer from the same inadequacies early women’s fiction did? How do we, as consumers, effect a change? In short, who determines what is out there and available for sale, and how do we get their number?

Well, that would be the folks in the publishing business—the editors, executives, and sales staff who authors rely on to get their product to market. We authors love these guys, because without them we’d have to go back to living Dilbert’s life in an office cubicle. We have a rewarding symbiotic relationship with our publishers—we provide a creative product, they provide the expertise required to get that product to market. But like any producer of any type of consumable, it is the job and goal of the “manufacturer” to attempt to meet the needs of their purchasing public.

So I’d like to know whether you believe that the current offerings in women’s fiction adequately meet your needs as a reader. In other words, if there was something different out there, would you buy it? Are you simply buying what’s out there by default?

And especially: Would you buy or not buy a book based solely upon whether it took place in an “exotic” setting or had a backdrop of socio-political conflict?

Speak now, or someone else will determine what you read.