You know what I like to do? I like to sit here after my husband goes to bed, turn on one of those 'instrumental music' channels, jazz and bossa nova, and just cuddle in. Rain pattering on the windows, the wind sounding around the corners, and write about serial killers who eviscerate women and leave them hanging upside down over tubs, like Ed Gein did.
Remember when I said I was going to write a romance story? (hint: last post) Well, it started in the wrecking yard, and ended up in a Youth Conservation Corps camp in Eastern Washington, our heroine hacking at the undergrowth with a machete by day and sneaking out of her bunkhouse at night to go get stoned, with a serial killer mixed up in there someplace.
Now I am not even kidding. I have a love interest in mind, I have a counter-love interest, I have a sub-plot that involves coming of age, but of taffeta and pearls there is not one atom. Or crinoline, Jon. I had to look that shit up online.
I like kittens! I like pretty things! Yes, I have a collection of Tonka Toys, but I also have a collection of medieval music and opera, too. I cry when I hear Luciano Pavrotti sing 'Nessa un Dorma'. I do! I like babies! I own makeup! (I do not wear it, because life is just too damn short, unless I have to go to a wedding or something.) And I have perfume, patchouli essential oil in fact, so I smell like a sweet psychedelic butterfly. I garden, I love roses, and I put up my hair...but the romance thing is absolutely eluding me. And the more it eludes me, the more I want to hunt it down and strangle it and hang it over a washtub and...
I think what I'm going to have to do is get over myself and actually read some romance novels. Dear sweet baby Jesus I am not looking forward to this at all, I really am not, I have those Jackie Collins novels burnt into my brain and those long discursions into the importance of getting just the right handbag and exchanging bitchy gossip and making shallow judgements based on shoes, and having pouting, moist lips aching for the kiss of GAAAAAAAH NO NO NO NO.
So. You unromantic people, you. Is there such a thing as a good, readable and most importantly ROMANTIC novel out there that isn't going to make me want to hide under the bathroom sink from self loathing?
I NEED SUGGESTIONS DAMMIT!!! GET ON IT!
I'm no help, since (a) I don't read fiction, (b) I am not a "girly girl", and (c) romance is a lie. tonka toys - jealous!
ReplyDeleteanne marie in philly: I have to hand it to you, you are the most pro-actively non-helpful person online, and I like that you like Tonka Toys. If you visited, we could lay them all out on the carpet and pretend to zoom them around and make 'vroom' noises. I have a dictionary collection you could read, too!
ReplyDeleteWell Im no help either. I read to much porn toots. But use Pam Demic in the story. God knows she's all back protection and needs laid.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't call Jackie Collins a romance writer!!
ReplyDeleteBlimey - you are getting your knickers in a twist! Try The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Or Romeo and Juliet - which is probably the basis for all romance novels.
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Mistress Maddie: I would LOVE to use Pam Demic in a story! B, do you have a YouTube I can watch to get the full Pam Demic experience? Or do I have to look at your pictures and guess? Because I guess WACK. Shoot me an answer, gurl.
ReplyDeleteMs. Scarlet: I read the one that was loosely based on the Joan Collins 'La Bitch' of the day, when she was on Dallas? If you swallow something toxic accidentally, open that book and read any page, quick. Your pyloric WILL respond. And you cannot make me read no 'Mill on the Floss'. You are not the boss of me. Mill on the Floss, my goodness.
ReplyDeleteI had to read Mill on the Floss at school, AND write essays on it. Why should I be the only one to suffer????
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