Amy, I have my own thoughts on that - want to mull over it a bit.

Thanks, Ailleann.

Maybe cause my heart's a little shriveled raisin.

I think it's bigger than you think it is.

want to mull over it a bit

I'd love to hear it -- this just came to me today when I was thinking about the topic, so I blurted it out in drabble form.

Maybe cause my heart's a little shriveled raisin.

I think it's bigger than you think it is.

If she's not careful she could foment a campaign to make her heart grow three sizes in one day.

Amy, it's really along the lines of how I tend to mentally separate out romances from love stories.

Because I do. I see them as entirely separate things, different realities entirely. Romance, in my head, is all about the trappings: everything from the initial meeting of the eyes through the rampant sex.

Love, written or lived, strikes me as something entirely different. There's nothing romantic about holding the man you love with his head in your lap while he vomits and hallucinates.

How does any of that get translated? It's what I've been trying to do with Kinkaid, and the only reason I can is to write his POV, first person.

I don't know you'd parse it out - it's a fascinating question. Do you separate that out? How do other writers feel about it?

A friend of mine over at LJ--a ficcer of some talent--is having a book published by Loose Id, an e-publisher. Pay is by royalities, but there's an ISBN and all that "yes, this is published material" stuff.

Is e-publishing a viable avenue? Well, I know it happens, but does it have a future, is it something to be proud of?

Connie, I'm shamefully ignorant about e-pubbling, honestly. It certainly wouldn't be my first choice - I like paper, damn it. But 44 Clowns is an e-book, and I'm delighted to be published in it. And the PariSalon anthology I was in was first in paper, then in electronic format.

I doubt it's going anywhere, personally.

I tend to mentally separate out romances from love stories.

Good point.

There are a handful of romances that go a lot deeper than what I usually see, in terms of that kind of love. Mostly historical, oddly enough, but I do think you're right -- the beginning of a relationship is a lot different than the entire course of one, and a lot of what you're talking about -- holding his head in your lap while he vomits, for example -- doesn't always fit into the arc of a romance for plot purposes alone, although I edited one about an alcoholic and the woman who fell in love with him that absolutely broke my heart.

A lot of what I'm trying to do (and plan to do) in that Epic project that you read deals with that aspect of love. The not so pretty pieces, the raw, the irrational.

The not so pretty pieces, the raw, the irrational

Which, to me, is part of the love, not part of the romance.

And where it gets critical is the fact that publishers will nix one in favour of the other - because, like it or not, THEY don't see the two as the same.

The one is the fantasy, the hearts and flowers, the meeting under the stars (or the stage at Woodstock), the click of the soul at the pit of the stomach. That's what readers apparently want to read, and what they want to go on forever.

Me, I can't go there, not as a writer or a reader. I like happy endings - but love is just as much about a cold moment resenting that your entire salary is going for anti-rejection transplant drugs for him as it is about the multiple orgasm.

And publishers don't seem to want to go there.

Which, to me, is part of the love, not part of the romance.

Yup. That's why the Epic line is so appealing to me -- it's fun to write romance, but even there I'm always tempted to write characters who maybe didn't get it right the first time, or who knew each other previously, because the meet/sparks fly/it's love romances are harder for me to fully buy into, unless they're really well done.

Even so, the Epic proposal is part of a book I started a long, long time ago, and some of it will be taken out if it actually sells, because there were sexual aspects and other more painful issues between them that I still think might be too raw for Harlequin.

That's what readers apparently want to read, and what they want to go on forever.

It's part of the fantasy, definitely. That once the book ends, the characters live happily ever after, having scads of kids and grandchildren, and no one dies and no one gets sick, etc. Of course, in some respects I think it's true that reading about a happy couple, one that is not facing a lot of conflict or problems, is boring. That's why so many shows bite the dust when the sexual tension is resolved, because...no conflict or suspense there.

But the truth is, every marriage/relationship faces challenges. People *do* get ill, or have car accidents, or lose children, or whatever. Reading about couples who go through kind of thing, and manage to keep loving each other, and supporting each other is fascinating to *me* but not so much to other readers, I guess. A long time ago (like twelve years ago) Kensington tried a line called "Couples," and in it the couple was married (or otherwise committed, I guess) but was facing some kind of challenge that threatened their relationship. The few I read and worked on were great, but the line died an early and painful death.