Clarification

A lot of romance writers are presently voicing their opinions on Mary Bly, the academic novelist who outed herself as romance writer Eloisa James, and earned a spot in my Authors Behaving Badly file.

For the record, I don't have a problem with Mary Bly, or Eloisa James, for that matter. I don't care whether she came out, stayed in, or furnished her little closet. Live and let live, ladies. There are plenty more out there like her.

What I have a problem with is being told, by her, that writing romance is shameful. She defined it as shameful, she behaved as though she felt it was shameful, and she gave us all her stately reasons and adorable family anecdotes as to why it's shameful.

Writing romance isn't shameful. My post, while funny, tells you precisely why.

You may not agree with me. So let me tell you about this fantasy I have. All the romance writers in the world get together, and stop writing. Every aspiring romance writer does the same. Every romance reader in the world stops buying books. Like a union thing, for a year or two.

You know what would happen? Can you imagine how many publishers would shut down? How many hundreds of thousands of people would be out of work? What an impact it would have, economically speaking?

You really should watch who you call shameful. One day we might get pissed off enough to do it.