Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Musings and directions

With apologies to Ramana who had commented, I took yesterday's post back to draft because I wasn't happy with it. The post was triggered in part by a conversation at work, my present work group is mainly female, but I became a little side-tracked. The post began:

Tennis and then dinner tonight with Helen. Helen says thanks to those who congratulated her on her graduation. She is going to pass on some of my netball photos to her team, although my understandable focus on her reduces the photos' broader value. I have actually had a few good photos recently. It comes from taking a lot. You have to strike one good one sometimes!

A degree of hilarity at work today. We were talking about e-publishing and recent successes. I said simply that I was thinking of changing my writing genre. There was a pause "You mean mummy porn?" someone said. Instant amusement. But why not? I could do with a useful royalty stream!

The post went on to talk a little about changing styles in fiction, of the rediscovery of romance, of relationships before becoming side-tracked by the discovery of some past writing of mine that was only peripherally connected with the original topic.  I was glad to find it, but  it was a sidetrack.

As often happens when I'm working on a post, I do some digging around looking at the back story. That was why I came across my past stuff, but there was also other material I found that interested me. Karly Lane, Diane Curran, Bronwyn Parry, Jenn J McLeod, Helene Young in Bellingen

This is a photo from romance writer Bronywn Parry's blog. The caption reads: 

From right to left – romantic thriller author Helene Young, Jenn McLeod (watch for her debut novel next year!), me, Diane Curran (she’ll have a debut novel soon too, I’m sure!), rural romance author Karly Lane , and Jeanette McA, cheerleader, supporter, and great friend to us all.

I hasten to add that Bronwyn writes romantic thrillers, not mummy porn. However, that photo taken in Bellingen in fact part of the back story. It's also a part of a story that I have written on before in a different context, the romance writers of New England. They almost constitute an entire school in their own right!

You can see the mixture in my mind. So, in all this, I will let yesterday's post rest for the present until my ideas settle a bit more.

Postscript

Other things seem to be bringing me back to this topic.  First was CityKat's piece in the Brisbane Times, Are romance novels as bad for relationships as porn?. Then Helen Dale (the original skepticlawyer) drew my attention to this post: Fifty Shades of Grrrrr. Do have a read. It's a very well written and honest piece.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jim

Well I actually found the earlier edition very interesting - and in fact have a copy of it in MsWord, for a very practical reason! The thing is, with advancing decreptitude, I find reading your pale red quite difficult, so I copy it to Word, then highlight and change font colour, boldness, so I can read more comfortably. fwiw.

But back to that post, I think at some stage it deserves an airing because it was well written and evocative of what I now think of as 'simpler family times'.

Have a lovely day.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

Glad you liked it, kvd. It's not lost, but might have been misinterpreted.

I am also glad that you told me about the colour problem. I have had a problem with my monitor for some time now that makes it difficult to judge colours.

Rummuser said...

Without taking away any merit in the replaced post, I am in total agreement with Anonymous.

By now of course you would have already had your lovely day!