So Long As We're Crowning Ourselves, I Wanna Be Princess Pudenda...

Have I ever mentioned how much I love PBWriter, aka author Lynn Viehl, aka a host of other aliases? I don't always agree with every word out of her fingers, but my affection and respect for her only grows as I watch her lay it on the line, day after day. (And her latest release, IF ANGELS BURN? Got me through one of the most difficult weeks in recent memory. Buy it. Read it, slowly. Savor every twisted little image.)

Yesterday, she linked to SquawkRadio, the which is ostensibly the home of a group of romance authors, but really...they come off as a tribe of Ladies Who Lunch and maybe write a little on the side. The post PBW linked to was...incendiary. And on my FAVORITE TOPIC, too--whether erotic romance IS romance, and whether, as authors of erotic romance, we have a right to belong to RWA.

After I stopped wanting to claw someone's eyes out...because, really...messy, and there's that whole "orange jumpsuit, side-seam pocket" thing to consider again...I crafted a response. But the post is old, and they probably wouldn't read it or respond to it, as the ladies in question are most assuredly off vacationing in the Hamptons or wherever women who think Blaze is pretty much as hot as RWA publishers and authors should be allowed to get go in the summertime. So I'm posting my response here, because only about six people read it anyway.

So... let me see if I've got this straight. Because ONE Ellora's Cave author says she writes porn, that paints the entire company with that label? I've heard more than one romance author say she writes "trash"--shall I call my sisters in romance purveyors of garbage based on that? How many EC books have you read, yourself? Have you picked up Sarah McCarty's PROMISES series? I dare you to read it and call it anything other than profound romance.

I wish I could say I'm surprised at the hypocrisy I've found here. Even so, it saddens me. You're happy to have my dues, I suppose, as they fund your PAN retreats, even as you wonder how I dare write what I do and call it romance...because I use words YOU find offensive? Because I have six sex scenes per 100K words instead of the three YOU find adequate? Because some of us dabble in same-sex fictional relationships, or allow our characters to experience sexuality outside what YOU consider safe, clean and reasonable?

Who died and left YOU Queen of the Book-Nookie, hmmm?

This week, the Passionate Ink Chapter of the RWA was officially recognized. Although it doesn't state so explicitly in the title--because it might scorch someone's retinas I suppose--it was formed as the erotic romance special interest chapter. It boasts a hundred and fifty souls who were already members of RWA at the time of its formation--a record, or something close to one, I believe. So I'm guessing neither Ellora's Cave, nor eroticism in romance, is going anywhere any time soon.

We're here. Some of us are even queer.

Get used it.