The More Things Change in RWA...

...the more I'm glad I left years ago.

I love romance. I'm a romance writer under the Alter Ego pen name. And if any of you have read my fantasy genre books, you know I have romance subplots.

I left because of the regular dissing of erotic romance and indie publishing and e-books. I was told I would never have a career if I indie-published, or kept writing trash or...pick your poison. The anger from others and myself was affecting me physically. I didn't need to end up in the hospital. Ironically, I quit both my day job and RWA in 2012.

Over the last seven years, I've had friends, old and new, suggest that I come to a meeting again. "Things have changed," they said. "RWA had lots of workshops on indie publishing," they said. "RWA is more open now than ever," they said.

Then the Rita nominees were announced at the end of March.

For those who don't know, the Ritas are the major awards in the romance genre. For romance writers, nabbing a Rita is a big deal.

Except the membership noticed at glaringly bright white problem. Yep, all the nominees for 2019 are white, straight women. And for the whipped cream on that milk pie, all stories nominated involved contained heroines who are ...straight, white women. After all the bullshit with the Oscars, you'd think other entertainment-related organization would learn.

*sigh*

The original brouhaha allegedly happened on RWA's PAN (Published Authors Network) forum. Things got so bad it spilled into other writer forums and the publishing industry at large.

Donna S. Frelick talked about the lack of criteria for judging  and lack of training allows personal bias to get in the way. Laurie A. Green pointed out the racism and homophobia weren't the only biases when it came to the Ritas. The controversy grew so widespread a UK paper, The Guardian, had a pretty extensive article about race and RWA.

Instead of hiding under rock or sic the RWA attorney on members (I've seen both happen the eight years I was an RWA member), RWA's current president HelenKay Dimon has pledged to find a solution to the biases within the organization. Frankly, I hope Ms. Dimon and her board find a solution.

However, it isn't just writers and publishers who are the problem. How we deal with reader biases?

Anyone who's written a series, regardless of the  genre, can tell you how the sales numbers go down for each volume. For example (and these are hypothetical numbers):

Book #1 sells 100 copies.
Book #2 sells 50 copies.
Book #3 sells 35 copies.
Book #4 sells 20 copies, and so on.

Alter Ego's first series contained four books. The heroine of the third book was African-American. (I'll get into writing the other in Wednesday's blog post.) I bought a photo of a lovely dark-skinned black woman I used as the cover of Book #3.

If I posted my sales spreadsheets for this series, you would see that sales for Book #3 went way behind the normal drop off after Book #2. In fact, Book #4 with a white heroine on the cover outsells Book #3 roughly 3 to 1.

Recently, I redid all the covers for this series because the male model I used in the original covers decided to be, using my friend Jo's favorite term, a shitbird on Facebook. It'll be interesting if the sales ratios start to shift for Book #3 now that I'm using generic high-heeled shoes for all the covers.

So what's the perfect answer? I don't know, but this is a conversation our society needs to have.


**I'm going to leave comments open as long as everyone uses their company manners. If you get personal or nasty, your comment will get File 13'd.**

How to Respond When Bigotry Hits the Streets

I admit when I heard about Brad Paisley's song Accidental Racist, I thought he was trying to be cute. And I REALLY wondered what was going through LL Cool J's head by participating on the record.

After listening to it, I think the song tried to bridge a gap, but it was rather sugar-coated. Both men could have gone farther in addressing the problem in the lyrics.

Because racism is a problem in this country. And it's becoming more and more obvious since President Obama was elected in 2008 when a great deal of festering ugliness exploded across the nation.

On last Thursday's Colbert Report, Stephen and guest Alan Cumming sang their own parody concerning homophobia.

The Colbert Report
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Did you laugh?

I laughed. I probably would have laughed harder if the parody wasn't in the coattails of nasty problems from last week.

One of the points of art is to get the human race to examine itself. One of the roles of artists is to ask the hard questions, to examine the things about ourselves we don't want to acknowledge.

As clumsy as Brad and LL's duet is, it has gotten people talking about stereotypes and judgments, on the internet and in real life. Maybe it will be the turning point in solving four hundred years of shit in this country.

I hope it is.

I really do.