Sad Day For Romance

Why, oh why, did I choose this particular time to start paying attention to what's going on in the romance community again? Today was a train wreck and, as usual, I couldn't stop looking. Today, Harlequin--the grand old dame, the backbone of romance--was stripped of it's publisher eligibility by RWA. And rightly so. But what a nightmare for all the Harlequin authors, past and present. My heart goes out to them tonight and I hope RWA can find a way to keep their priveleges intact.

I'm not going over all the points of what's happened. It's already being talked to death on all the loops and the popular blogs. Speaking as an author who still has the dream of being published with one of the big, mass-market publishers, this is the last thing we needed. Romance writers already take enough hits. The literary world will have a field day with this latest drama. It's days like this that make me yearn for the days before the internet and all the yahoogroups and blogs came into being. There wasn't very much drama back then. Only us writers and our stories. It's days like this that make me think anyone must be out of her mind to want to be a published author.

The big media is already picking up on the story. Here's a link to a very demeaning little article in The New Yorker.

I hope tomorrow is a better day.

Devon