Guys And Romance

I was over at my neighbors’ house after work last night. A sort of impromptu dinner party had come together, to which my husband had been invited since he was on his poor little lonesome self for dinner (which normally means Hardee’s in his world) and I went over to find him. Now you must envision this as me and my neighbor being the only women, then five guys (her DH and mine being two of them). So while I was over there the subject of my writing romantic suspense came up. They, of course, asked about it, so I gave an infinitely brief (probably not even blurb worthy back cover material) description because, of course, they are guys. One of them asked if there were any “quivering members”. This quickly disintegrated into a slightly drunken contest for the most ridiculous description of the male anatomy (the winner was, I believe, “throbbing purple milk spitter”, as that is the one I finally spewed my drink on). Once the hilarity subsided (my spewing my drink set them off on fresh gales of laughter) I was so proud to hear DH point out that it isn’t that kind of book, that it’s a murder mystery that just happens to have folks falling in love in the middle of. So, okay, it’s a little more complicated than that, but at least he defended the honor of my work against the usual idiotic comments about “just romance”. There was also considerable braggadocio on his part that he was “responsible for 50% of the major plot twist…well maybe 30…” In his defense, the idea for who the killer actually is, was his. But I think he will be surprised when he reads the finished product at how not the central shock of the story that is. In any event, it was funny. Under ordinary conditions I’d have been offended at the guys’ response to what I was writing (for mixed in with the whole “You’re writing a book? That’s cool!” was the usual contempt at romance. Someone said “yeah some of those are pretty raunchy” and I wanted to ask, “Oh, have you read many?”), but after a long day of writing and going to work, I just didn’t care. They aren’t my target audience, and it wasn’t worth getting upset over. And really, it’s not like a bunch of semi-drunk guys are going to listen if I try to extol the virtues of romance as a genre. Love, rather than money, should make the world go round, after all.