TJ Michaels

RWA – Romance Writers of America – has officially taken the stance to no longer recognize Harlequin as a publisher eligible to receive conference resources.

Holy crap, I must admit I never thought it would happen. Why? Because the RWA has been less than kind to the smaller presses by exhibiting a bit of ’snooty-ism’ toward small press authors while brown nosing the big New York houses, such as Harlequin. It’s the main reason I happily let my RWA membership expire. My thought was, “Well, hell, if I’m not good enough to be recognized as a true pubbed author in your eyes, then why should I keep sending you my money?” Yes, I am a real author with real contracts and real royalties coming in. I’ve never paid anyone to publish a book, but have gone through the submission process just like the New Yorker’s. Yet being part of RWA was like trying to please the ever disapproving parent that was never going to recognize that you’d ‘made it’.

So why the fallout with Harlequin? Due to the powerhouse publisher’s launch of their self-publishing entity, Harlequin Horizons, a vanity press. Vanity presses require authors to pay to be published rather than the age-old (and wonderfully lovely model) of paying the author for their work via royalties and/or advances. And vanity presses are not recognized by the RWA.

Piggybacking on Ann Aguirre’s thorough post on the topic, here’s the skinny–>

TJ

I’ve been talking to some friends of mine about what I would like to see if my book, Carinian’s Seeker-Vampire Council of Ethics Book 1, was made into a movie. The topic of race came up.

The Vampire Council of Ethics series is a multicultural series. And when I say multicultural, I mean REALLY. In fact, the whole series is a nice mix of folks from various backgrounds, races and just about everything. The main couple is of different races. The secondary cast is multi-racial, and even the bad guys get into the mix a bit. In the end, there’s Black, White, East Indian, Japanese, Native American, African, etc.

So here is the question that sent me to the blogs to get your advice:

If the books were made into a TV series or movie (like True Blood) would it matter to you if the main couple in Carinian’s Seeker (white male, black female) was switched around to black male, white female?

The thought from the film maker chicklet was that it is more socially acceptable to see a white female with a black male than the other way around and that swapping the races might attract a larger audience.

But that made me think of the recent Star Trek movie. I mean Spock and Uhura had a seriously hot thing going on. Now how many of us saw that coming? Not me! But did I think it was cool and that the characters made it work? Sure did!

Personally, I like movies that stick as close to the book as possible, but the other argument is that if the acting is done well, will people really care if the races were switched?

What do you think?

TJ

Yes, it’s a controversial subject and I’ve been thinking long and hard about whether I actually wanted to jump into this fray or not. So here goes…

I recently read a book by a fellow author and guess what? It was based on a book and movie called Howl’s Moving Castle. How do I know? Because it’s one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen it a million times. So when I read this book and saw that from the beginning of the book through to the end was the plot and storyline of Howl’s I couldn’t believe it. While the names of the characters were different from the book and movie, the descriptions of the characters, their hair, dress, mannerisms and personalities were spot on to the characters in Howl’s Moving Castle.

Then the phone calls and e-mails started. Why? Because I’d recommended this author’s book to other folks (who happen to love anime, too) BEFORE I’d actually read the darn thing.

One of my reader friends was so outraged they even threatened to call the studio in Japan that created the movie, as well as contact the original author of the work. Now THAT put me in a less than welcome spot. What was I supposed to do?

Should I contact the publisher and let them know that one of their authors basically wrote a romance around someone else’s well-known work? Hmmm, not sure. What if the publisher decides I’m the troublemaker or simply claims that neither they nor the author was aware? Well, perhaps I should contact the author? Probably not – it’s not as if the author doesn’t know that the romance she wrote was based line-on-line and precept-on-precept on someone else’s work, right? Right.

So then where does that leave me? Frankly, I have no idea…