John Blumenthal's Blog - Posts Tagged "romance"
How I Screwed Up My First Romance Novel
Inspired by the gazillions of dollars people are making in the romance novel genre, I decided to write one with a friend, Barry Golson. Granted, the genre is dominated by women, but so what? How hard could it be?
Besides, Barry and I weren’t exactly neophytes. Some years ago, we’d cut our teeth on a short romance novella called Love’s Reckless Rash, written under the pen name Rosemary Cartwheel. Granted, it was a spoof but it gave us a feel for the lingo. We knew our way around the territory.
Sort of.
But this time, we vowed to write a straight one. Our heroine would succumb to fiery passion, flaming eroticism, burning desire and lots of other forms of romantic arson.
Sure, there would be challenges. First, we would have to attempt to see things through a female’s perspective, which meant that power tools would not figure prominently in the plot. Also, we don’t know anything about romance because we’re guys and we don’t understand things like why women like candles so much. We asked our wives for help but they thought the idea of guys – especially us -- writing a romance novel was… well… idiotic.
We decided to ignore them.
Having written Love’s Reckless Rash as a period piece, we felt comfortable with the historical approach. It would take place in Jane Austen’s era. There would be dukes and earls and princes, all of them incredibly horny because in those days first base meant getting beyond the bustle.
The era’s sexual repression also appealed to us as did the language of the day -– words like “hither” and “hence” and “bodice” (although we had to look up “bodice” in a dictionary.)
So far so good. We mapped out a story. Now, all we had to do was fill the pages. Easy right?
Nope.
Ten pages into it, we encountered problems. Every time our story required us to describe ball gowns, sensuous fragrances, the intricacies of corsets or most importantly, the mysteries of the female heart, we’d get stuck.
How did we compensate for our ignorance? Simple. We went for laughs. Again. We simply couldn’t write it without cracking up. Every time we tried to craft a lurid sex scene we couldn’t resist a punch line.
Often, we’d start a sentence with the best of intentions, but end up with this:
“I have never felt my heartstrings pulled so sharply as they are being pulled at this moment. I feel as if they will snap, and my heart will be flung across the garden into yonder lake.”
“’Sir, kindly remove your nose from my bosoms this instant! Bosoms are not places into which one inserts one’s nose. If bosom nosing is a custom in this vile place, it is not one that I care to have performed on my bosoms!!’”
“She knew her One True Love was out there somewhere, practicing cruel expressions in the mirror, opening his shirt just so, and in general posing rakishly, roguishly, and redundantly.”
You get the idea. Eventually, we succumbed to temptation. We expanded our original spoof to novel length, sending our heroine on new adventures to foreign places where she would encounter a variety of slow-witted potential paramours of different nationalities, and upper-class twits, most of who would –- of course -- ardently attempt to unravel her sixteen petticoats. We titled it, Passing Wind of Love.
In other words, we fell back into the ditch.
And we still don’t understand why women like candles so much.
John Blumemthal's next novel THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD will be published by Regal House in October 2019.
Besides, Barry and I weren’t exactly neophytes. Some years ago, we’d cut our teeth on a short romance novella called Love’s Reckless Rash, written under the pen name Rosemary Cartwheel. Granted, it was a spoof but it gave us a feel for the lingo. We knew our way around the territory.
Sort of.
But this time, we vowed to write a straight one. Our heroine would succumb to fiery passion, flaming eroticism, burning desire and lots of other forms of romantic arson.
Sure, there would be challenges. First, we would have to attempt to see things through a female’s perspective, which meant that power tools would not figure prominently in the plot. Also, we don’t know anything about romance because we’re guys and we don’t understand things like why women like candles so much. We asked our wives for help but they thought the idea of guys – especially us -- writing a romance novel was… well… idiotic.
We decided to ignore them.
Having written Love’s Reckless Rash as a period piece, we felt comfortable with the historical approach. It would take place in Jane Austen’s era. There would be dukes and earls and princes, all of them incredibly horny because in those days first base meant getting beyond the bustle.
The era’s sexual repression also appealed to us as did the language of the day -– words like “hither” and “hence” and “bodice” (although we had to look up “bodice” in a dictionary.)
So far so good. We mapped out a story. Now, all we had to do was fill the pages. Easy right?
Nope.
Ten pages into it, we encountered problems. Every time our story required us to describe ball gowns, sensuous fragrances, the intricacies of corsets or most importantly, the mysteries of the female heart, we’d get stuck.
How did we compensate for our ignorance? Simple. We went for laughs. Again. We simply couldn’t write it without cracking up. Every time we tried to craft a lurid sex scene we couldn’t resist a punch line.
Often, we’d start a sentence with the best of intentions, but end up with this:
“I have never felt my heartstrings pulled so sharply as they are being pulled at this moment. I feel as if they will snap, and my heart will be flung across the garden into yonder lake.”
“’Sir, kindly remove your nose from my bosoms this instant! Bosoms are not places into which one inserts one’s nose. If bosom nosing is a custom in this vile place, it is not one that I care to have performed on my bosoms!!’”
“She knew her One True Love was out there somewhere, practicing cruel expressions in the mirror, opening his shirt just so, and in general posing rakishly, roguishly, and redundantly.”
You get the idea. Eventually, we succumbed to temptation. We expanded our original spoof to novel length, sending our heroine on new adventures to foreign places where she would encounter a variety of slow-witted potential paramours of different nationalities, and upper-class twits, most of who would –- of course -- ardently attempt to unravel her sixteen petticoats. We titled it, Passing Wind of Love.
In other words, we fell back into the ditch.
And we still don’t understand why women like candles so much.
John Blumemthal's next novel THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD will be published by Regal House in October 2019.
Acknowledgements Page --- The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird
The following is the Acknowledgments Page for my sixth novel, "The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird," to be published by Regal House in October 2019. (Available for pre-order on Amazon.)
Whom, I wonder, shall I acknowledge this time around? My old college English professor who encouraged me to become a writer without mentioning the possibility of starvation? My agent, who encouraged me to make the book more marketable without telling me how? My editor, who pointed out that it might have been wise for me to have paid more attention when my teachers were explaining grammar? Or to the cumbersome Dewey Decimal System, now, sadly, no more than a vague memory among those of a certain age?
Nah.
Since “The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird” is the story of two people whose lives are utterly consumed by classic literature, I think it appropriate to pay homage to those who love to read, that noble minority of souls who still look to books for engaging stories and endearing characters, for clever turns of phrase, for the joys of well-wrought interior monologue.
They say that we book lovers are an endangered species. I think not. My meanderings throughout the maze of social media have led me to believe that reading is indeed quite alive and prospering. One can easily find a plethora of those dedicated to reading on Instagram and Tumblr; Goodreads reaches twenty-five million people, twice as many as the previous year; book bloggers abound; Facebook offers hundreds of groups dedicated to a variety of books, not to mention countless author fan pages, many with thousands of followers.
Amazon’s cyber shelves contain the largest collection of books in the history of the written word and the retail giant has given birth to the most innovative approach to reading since the invention of typesetting. Thus, thanks to Amazon, I may now travel with hundreds of books without increasing the weight of my suitcase by more than a few ounces, giving new dimension to Stephen King’s famous observation that “Books are uniquely portable magic.”
#thestrangecourtshipofAbigailBird #johnblumenthalbooks #romcom
Whom, I wonder, shall I acknowledge this time around? My old college English professor who encouraged me to become a writer without mentioning the possibility of starvation? My agent, who encouraged me to make the book more marketable without telling me how? My editor, who pointed out that it might have been wise for me to have paid more attention when my teachers were explaining grammar? Or to the cumbersome Dewey Decimal System, now, sadly, no more than a vague memory among those of a certain age?
Nah.
Since “The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird” is the story of two people whose lives are utterly consumed by classic literature, I think it appropriate to pay homage to those who love to read, that noble minority of souls who still look to books for engaging stories and endearing characters, for clever turns of phrase, for the joys of well-wrought interior monologue.
They say that we book lovers are an endangered species. I think not. My meanderings throughout the maze of social media have led me to believe that reading is indeed quite alive and prospering. One can easily find a plethora of those dedicated to reading on Instagram and Tumblr; Goodreads reaches twenty-five million people, twice as many as the previous year; book bloggers abound; Facebook offers hundreds of groups dedicated to a variety of books, not to mention countless author fan pages, many with thousands of followers.
Amazon’s cyber shelves contain the largest collection of books in the history of the written word and the retail giant has given birth to the most innovative approach to reading since the invention of typesetting. Thus, thanks to Amazon, I may now travel with hundreds of books without increasing the weight of my suitcase by more than a few ounces, giving new dimension to Stephen King’s famous observation that “Books are uniquely portable magic.”
#thestrangecourtshipofAbigailBird #johnblumenthalbooks #romcom
A Real Page-Turner!!
Below is a blessedly short synopsis of "THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAL BIRD" which has been described by some as an even greater page-turner than"The 2019 Miami Florida Residential Business Codes as Applied to External Sewer Plumbing Fixtures and Modular Electrical Safety Measures."
Our hero, Ishmael Archer, is a young man beset by a profound lack of social skills, an obsession with classic literature and the peculiar speaking style of a Dickens character, He seems destined for the lonely life of a literature professor at the academic backwater of Longfellow College. While he yearns for female companionship, a recent acrimonious divorce followed by a series of romantic disasters have left him in a state of emotional fragility.
Struggling to pay his rent, he is obliged to undertake the dreaded task of teaching a summer creative writing class. Convinced that he will be saddled with a group of student malcontents who care not a whit for Tolstoy or Dickens, Ishmael is delighted to encounter the luminescent Abigail Bird, whose passion for literature equals his own. Unfortunately, her past failures at love also equal his own so their romance proceeds undeclared as they both shyly dance around the subject.
This undefined relationship is cut abruptly short when Abigail suffers an accident that causes fiction to become fact and vice versa. Although Abigail is inexplicably changed, Ishmael decides to resume his courtship but must find a way to connect with the Abigail Bird with whom he had originally fallen in love. Will Ishmael’s strange new courtship of Abigail succeed? Will she change back to her original state? Will he find the nerve to risk rejection and declare his love? Did she love him prior to her accident?
The novel is peppered with a cast of eccentric characters—a college dean obsessed with orchids, a Greek landlord with a deep affinity for the works of Ernest Hemingway, and a self-important writer who vies with Ishmael for Abigail’s affections.
Winner, 2019 Next Generation Book Award for Fiction.
https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Courts...
Our hero, Ishmael Archer, is a young man beset by a profound lack of social skills, an obsession with classic literature and the peculiar speaking style of a Dickens character, He seems destined for the lonely life of a literature professor at the academic backwater of Longfellow College. While he yearns for female companionship, a recent acrimonious divorce followed by a series of romantic disasters have left him in a state of emotional fragility.
Struggling to pay his rent, he is obliged to undertake the dreaded task of teaching a summer creative writing class. Convinced that he will be saddled with a group of student malcontents who care not a whit for Tolstoy or Dickens, Ishmael is delighted to encounter the luminescent Abigail Bird, whose passion for literature equals his own. Unfortunately, her past failures at love also equal his own so their romance proceeds undeclared as they both shyly dance around the subject.
This undefined relationship is cut abruptly short when Abigail suffers an accident that causes fiction to become fact and vice versa. Although Abigail is inexplicably changed, Ishmael decides to resume his courtship but must find a way to connect with the Abigail Bird with whom he had originally fallen in love. Will Ishmael’s strange new courtship of Abigail succeed? Will she change back to her original state? Will he find the nerve to risk rejection and declare his love? Did she love him prior to her accident?
The novel is peppered with a cast of eccentric characters—a college dean obsessed with orchids, a Greek landlord with a deep affinity for the works of Ernest Hemingway, and a self-important writer who vies with Ishmael for Abigail’s affections.
Winner, 2019 Next Generation Book Award for Fiction.
https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Courts...
