A New Novel from Pam (and a little about how Molly W. discovered romance)

I always get a little nuts waiting for The Revision Letter from my editor, so my thoughts are a bit scattered today...

So in lieu of a coherent post I thought I'd unveil the cover of the book, front and back, since that's what they've sent me thus far.




Isn't it pretty?






In Regency-speak, isn't it devilish pretty?

As you can see, the book is called The Edge of Impropriety. (I like the way the end of her shift gets tangled up with the title lettering, don't you?)

It'll be out in November, a erotic historical story whose heroine is a silver fork novelist (those were glitzy novels they read during the Regency -- the Regencies they read during the Regency, if you will; I love playing self-referential games). The hero's a classical scholar turned Mediterranean adventurer (anything to get those guys outside and give them a good, sexy suntan); he's one of the people responsible for hauling back all the spectacular Greek art you see in the British museum, though of course -- being one of my guys -- he's developed a conscience about it.

In fact, my couple meets cute among the Elgin Marbles.

And banter their way into each other's hearts (and bed) amid dinner-party discussion of Greek eros and esthetics -- and a little about the British empire as well (all of which was big fun for me to research).

But until I find out what revisions I have to make to the text, I better not tell you any more about The Edge of Impropriety.

Or worry too much about those revisions (though if you think I'm not worrying, perhaps there's a fixer-upper temple on a big hill in Greece that I can sell you).

So instead, I'm trying to prepare a set of comments to deliver at the Popular Culture Association Meeting next month. I was invited to speak on one of the romance panels; yes, there are academic scholars who study popular romance fiction: you can find out more about what they think and say and do at the blog Teach Me Tonight (and follow out the links from there).

The title I sent them was "From BDSM to Erotic Romance: Observations of a Shy Pornographer." Well, I figured it would get people's attention, anyway. And it has the virtue of limiting what I say to the work of one author I know a great deal about (moi) -- because to me one of the most daunting aspects of romance scholarship must be knowing how to define the field, popular romance being so huge and so driven by the prevailing winds of an ever-changing market.

But the core question for my presentation will be how a writer of hardcore BDSM porn came to turn her attention to romance writing. I wasn't a romance reader at the time, though I was vastly curious about the bodice-ripper covers it seemed I'd been seeing everywhere for a decade or so, and which seemed to seethe with the sort of repressed passion on the verge declaring itself (see my last post as well, about Mr. Darcy and repression -- gosh, I'm already learning to footnote myself). And my point (one of my points, anyway) will be that certain elements of the romance novel form sort of sprang forth from under my pornographer's hand...

(but some of you Molly Weatherfield readers probably know where this is going already)

...at the moment when, at the end of Carrie's Story, Jonathan makes his unwilling and hitherto-repressed declarations to Carrie (he's even pale -- god help him and his author -- and has been chain-smoking). Whereupon Carrie (cruel healthy young hyper-intellected smartass that she is) muses angrily that when he'd promised to give her a narrative form for her fantasies, she didn't think it would be "a goddamn Harlequin romance".

Which was the same moment when I (older, more compassionate, hyper-intellected smartass that I was), decided that I'd better find out what those "goddamn Harlequin romances" had to tell me (I thought of them generically back then -- Harlequin was like Kleenex).

True story. I still have to figure out how to tell it (among others).

In my spare time, when I'm not finding revisions and better ways to tell my tales of eros, esthetics, and empire, at The Edge of Impropriety.

If you want to find out more about the Popular Culture Association conference, it's here.

And as for questions... oh lord, in my disheveled state, you want questions?

Well, how do you think BDSM and romance fiction hook up? Or do you?

And isn't that cover for The Edge of Impropriety just fiendishly lovely?