And Now For Someone Completely Different...
by Chris Szego
I worked in my local library all through junior high and high school. One of the lingering benefits was that for years I knew where all the brand new books were kept: after they were entered into the system, but before they were put on the shelf. It was like being an explorer. Not only were the books pristine and untouched, but there was also the chance that I might make some fabulous discovery before anyone else.
Then one day in 1993, I did.
It was utterly unprepossessing at first sight: a slim category romance
from the Harlequin Temptation line with a startlingly bad cover. It
sheer unattractiveness of it caught my eye. Up till then Harlequin and
Silhouette had used drawings in their cover art, and had never aimed
for photo-realism. This one had an actual photo, and a cheesey one at
that. Idly I opened the book, wondering about the poor author stuck
with such an unfortunate cover... and after just a few pages, realized
it didn’t matter. Because any book written by Jennifer Crusie was
going to find its way into the hands of hoardes of readers.
That particular book was
Manhunting,
and it was Jennifer Crusie’s first novel. She had come to the
attention of Harlequin when she won a novella contest the previous
year. Her entry ‘Sizzle’, was published by Harlequin as a chapbook,
and was given out as a little bonus to subscribers. It’s one of the
few pieces from Crusie’s time with Harlequin that hasn’t been reissued
in one form or another, for which she says she’s very grateful.
What made Crusie such a welcome addition to the genre? Well, for one
thing, her characters always feel like real people instead of cardboard
cutouts. They own pets; they love their jobs (or hate them); they try
and sometime fail, and feel foolish, and try again anyway. She’s
written about divorces, funerals, political ambition, and legalizing
marijuana - all within the particular confines of the category
romance. And secondly, she’s funny. Not pretending to be, or trying
to be:
funny.
Humour is subjective. What’s funny to A
might be unfunny to B and incomprehensible to C. It is also, as any
comedian will tell you, darned hard. Crusie’s pitch perfect ear for
dialogue makes it seem easy. And it works because it’s delivered by
real people. They talk fast, they insult each other, they’re funny not
because they’re trying to make jokes, or deliver one-liners, but
because sometime people are just plain funny.
After writing six
very successful books, Crusie left Harlequin over a ‘moral rights’
clause the company wanted to insert into all contracts. She wrote two
more category-length books, for the now-defunct Bantam Loveswept line.
Then she turned her hand to writing longer romances for St. Martin’s.
Once again, she challenged everyone’s idea of what a romance could be.
Her first single title,
Tell Me Lies begins with a woman
discovering that her husband is having an affair, again. Then she
finds out he’s planning to take their daughter out of the country.
Then he’s murdered. And
then a case full of stolen cash
appears in her car. Doesn’t sound terribly funny - but in Crusie's
hands it is. Not all the time, of course, that would be tedious. But
Crusie proves that just because something is serious doesn’t mean it
has to be full of angst or depression.
Crusie herself knows a
bit about depression. It put her through a period of total block: she
was unable to write, and unable to care. During that time, she
attended the Maui Writer’s retreat where she met Bob Meyer, who said,
“We should write a book together”. Meyer, a former Green Beret, writes
straight-up action suspense novels, as well as military SF under the
name Robert Doherty. They have very different writing routines,
techniques and audiences (not to mention lives). But their writing
voices are not dissimilar.
Don’t Look Down, the first novel they wrote together, hit the NYT list. The second, the recently released
Agnes And The Hitman is even better.
The other thing Crusie and Meyer do together extremely well is teach.
They've given writing workshops all around the US, explaining plot
structure, characterization, point-of-view - the ‘Bob and Jenny’ show,
as they call it, touches all aspects of the writing process. You can
see the workshop for yourself at
their joint website, and reap the benefits of a most original, and highly welcome, partnership.
~~~
Chris Szego wants to be Crusie when she grows up.
Tags: assassins , Bob Meyer , category romances , Harlequin , Jennifer Crusie , library , military , Robert Doherty , wit
That was a good article, but I was interested in this bit right here that's really just a side comment:
"After writing six very successful books, Crusie left Harlequin over a ‘moral rights’ clause the company wanted to insert into all contracts."
Just what the heck is a moral rights clause?
—Evil Roy Slade
It's a frighteningly evil little clause that would have allowed the publisher to make changes to the text on moral grounds.
Jenny said, "Define 'moral grounds' exactly", but of course, no one could. It's a clause that would pander to the worst, more fearful, repressed reader possible. You know, the kind of person who would want a book banned because it contained something she found objectionable. So Jenny said "No thanks" and walked.
—Chris Szego
so are moral rights clauses common in romance books?
also, i'm curious about how crusie and meyer work the romance and the action-suspense in their books together. assuming that their novels together have these elements. of course, maybe meyer leaves that aside. just seems like a title with hitman in it might have action and suspense. and hitmen.
and is the moral clause related to the sex or the violence, if there's violence in her books?
—Carol Borden
It's not necessarily a common clause. The problem with it, of course, is that it could be used to alter anything. Someone from the heartlands doesn't like a gay character? Presto, the character is now straight (that's NOT an actual example, just a bad-case-scenario).
As for Bob and Jenny together, the orignal aim was that they'd write a book from two points of view: Bob would write the male POV and Jenny the female. And that's still how they start, though by the end of a novel, they've both examined, commented on, edited, and revised each other's work so much they're not always sure who wrote which words.
And yes, there's a fair amount of violence in their co-written books. Bob makes sure all the ordinance is properly identified.
—Chris Szego
Hi Chris,
I enjoyed the article. It cries out for some examples, though: "Crusie’s pitch perfect ear for dialogue makes it seem easy. And it works because it’s delivered by real people." Cool, give us a sample!
Also, I'm as interested in the "morals clause" as everyone else. Would you consider doing an article on that in the near future?
—weed
We have saying in our bookstore: Frontlist may bring customers through the door, but it's the backlist that brings them back. Book lovers are completists. Bookstores that can fill the gaps in their ever-increasing collections quickly become favourite stops. There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of putting it all together, of finally finally owning all the books by a much-loved author. Of course, neither is there any pleasure to equal the joy in the discovery of a new favourite. Like, say, one of the recent additions to my pantheon of must-haves: Tamara Lejeune.
At the risk of tearing up