Arts [ Persona ] Good Girl Gone Bad January 2007

by Karin Tabke
Images by Russell Byrne

Karin set out to become a novelist and ended up actually being published by one of the large New York publishing houses. So her’s is a rare and interesting story.

I read my first romance in the eighth grade and realized that the life of a romance writer would be the life for me. I wrote my first romance novel in high school. It was pretty awful! Three decades would pass before my first novel would finally be published.

I get a charge out of writing these things because I’m in love with love itself. I love the journey of the heart and am thrilled by the passions stirred up in the souls of those who are truly falling in love. I made the wonderful discovery that writing romance novels provides my imagination with an even more thrilling escape than reading them does.

The Wonderful World of Romance Novels
Some people call the romance genre Fiction for a Reason. The reason is to provide women with an escape from the world of dysfunctional bosses, impossible schedules, and unreasonable demands. I know when I pick up a romance, no matter how it starts and no matter how hard life becomes for them, the hero and the heroine will end up together. And I feel better!

I actually made the irrevocable decision to pursue a writing career only five years ago. It’s been a tough five years, however! You would think that becoming a romance writer would be easier than it is, because last year more than 65 million people read at least one romance in the United States alone.

The romance novel category is the biggest of all the fiction genres. In fact, more of these are sold than all other mass-market categories put together. In terms of raw numbers, in 2004 readers bought 1.2 billion dollars worth of these things, so it is a huge piece of the publishing pie.

The size of the market, however, is completely engulfed by the number of people who want to write a novel. Tens of thousands of people each year decide to become romance writers so it’s a tough business to break into. There’s a lot of competition!

There are a number of sub-genres in the world of romance writing including such things as inspirational, paranormal, science fiction, and erotica. The last category, erotic romance, is gaining a greater market share every year. Women want explicit stories about people who are unafraid to be sexual creatures. The old adage, “Sex sells,” is right on. Phenomena like MTV, Sex in the City, and Desperate Housewives show what women are looking for. This is what writers like me are giving to them.

My writings have gravitated to a grainy and erotic version of romantic suspense. I’m not satisfied with those “bodice rippers,” as they used to be called. In my books the woman’s whole dress eventually ends up on the floor. A few times, perhaps. The old stories kept the bedroom door closed but that thing’s wide open, in my books.

My stories are not pornographic. Even though the roughest of my passages are certainly explicit, each of my stories is about a great romance. The central relationships in my books are all of a thoroughly monogamous nature between two committed people.

My romances are written mostly for women and are told from the woman’s point of view. Also, my heroine is never a passive sex object. She’s a passionate individual who is becoming aware of her sexual appetites and is discovering how to fulfill her longings.

My novels empower women. My heroines are never gentle timorous creatures who get themselves into trouble and must be rescued by some dashing hero. The leading ladies in my stories are able to leap to their own defense. They are warriors not victims. The hero might come on as a modern version of a knight, but the woman is like a modern version of Joan of Arc — better with a knife than with a spatula. Their buff and hard-eyed lovers are able to hold up their end of a fight, for sure, but they never have to hold up the woman’s end of it.

It’s fun writing one of my stories. I get a lot of cops involved because, of course, they lead rough-and-tumble lives of adventure, at least in one of my stories.

I actually have a pretty good handle on the cops’ thing because my husband is a retired law enforcement officer. In fact, he is one of my heroes come to life. He’s a man’s man, smart and funny, with a lot of personal integrity. Most importantly, my husband has a big heart and keeps me right in the center of it where I belong.

I have access to a lot of first-hand experience by other policemen. My friend Cynthia Lea-Clark is a forensic psychologist. Ray Monet is ex-FBI. “Write what you know,” writing coaches always say. This romantic suspense is what I know.

My fictional heroes are all alphas, just like the real people in my own life including my father, husband, and even our kids. My heroines are dominant females, like I am myself. I go through life trying to be pleasant towards everyone, but mess with my family and I’m not going to wait for my husband to go fetch his 9 mm. I’m going to come down on you right now myself!

The Writers’ Road
That alpha spit-in-your-eye quality helped me become a successful writer. The word “quit” isn’t found in my vocabulary. My dad was a self-made man who drilled into us kids the need for working hard. “There are no free lunches,” he used to say. “You reap what you sow.”

When I decided to become a writer I began to spend all my free time cranking out pages that eventually grew into stories, novellas, and then into novels. “You have to walk before you can run,” they say, but in those earliest works I was hitching along the floor on my bottom and cranking out some really dreadful text.

If publishers’ rejection letters ever become a valid genre for collectors, I’m going to make a killing on eBay because I’ve got a collection of hundreds of these things. Steven King said that he had a nail sticking out of the wall of his office on which he would impale the rejection letters as they came in. That made me laugh! A nail would never have done the trick for me. I would have needed a huge spike to hold them all.

This is the point at which many people give up their aspirations to be a writer. You pour your heart, mind, and soul into a story, article, or book only to have people respond with negative and even snotty comments.

I got rejection letters from a host of agents and acquisition editors. The letters ran the gamut from “We’re sorry! This doesn’t fit in with what we’re looking for” all the way down to “You need to learn English.” One of the judges in a contest looked at a writing sample I had submitted and asked me if I had learned English as a second language.

Unless you just give up trying, the only way a novice writer can respond to criticism is by using it as a basis for improvement. You can’t be defensive! For example, the judge’s comment about English as a second language was made about a piece in which my character actually was speaking English as his second language. I could have sneered at the criticism on that basis, but I took the experience as an indication that I needed to work harder. And I did!

The fact is that in those early days I really didn’t know anything about things like the rules of grammar and usage. I had never paid attention in class in either high school or college. I had bigger fish to fry in those days than achieving academic excellence and was content with my ‘C’ in English, which I was able to get without ever being able to tell a dangling participle from a split infinitive. To make up for my deficiencies I found some remedial online courses that taught the principles of grammar, composition, and sentence structure.

I also started to learn the tools of the romance writer’s trade. I was surprised to discover that the rules in writing romance are no less stringent than those for writing musical compositions in a sonata allegro style or for playing a game of baseball.

It turns out that certain things must happen in a romance, as well as other things that must not happen. For example, during the story the hero and heroine can’t have sex with anyone else, whatever their previous experiences were. You can’t kill a dog in one of your stories, or permit an infant to be killed. Writers violate these taboos at the loss of goodwill by their readers. A writer friend of mine has received hate mail for killing off a person who, in the opinion of the letter writer, should have been permitted to live.

Most importantly in a romance is the mandatory “They Lived Happily Ever After” ending. The classical ending showed the couple riding off into the sunset, but modern standards permit any emotionally satisfying dénouement. For example, a story can end on a note of, “All right. Let’s give this relationship a try.” This will work because the reader can know in her heart that the relationship really is destined to work out.

Grinding My Way to Glory
Any published writer will tell you that the secret to good writing is simply to write and write. I put my growing body of knowledge to work in writing constantly. Writing became my rest state. If I wasn’t tending to inescapable social and physical obligations then I was seated at my computer and generating pages.

Hours of labor evolved into years of rejection. I was going to writers conferences and “rubbing whiskers” with every writer, editor, and agent I could find. It’s hard work sticking yourself out there all the time, but marketing is always the most challenging part of any financial adventure, I think.

My writing evolved to the point that I finally wrote a novella, called Stakeout, that people began showing interest in. I queried one of the top agencies in New York and acquired an agent who sold six of my books to Simon & Schuster. Their fiction division, called Pocket, has enough money to launch their authors.

One of the things Simon & Schuster did was to get my first book, Good Girl Gone Bad, excerpted in November’s Cosmopolitan Magazine. Those people liked the idea of my sexy women who earn men’s respect by being able to take care of themselves.

I sold one of my new books, Skin, on a tagline, “Jaded cop vs. Mafia Princess.” Now I have to figure out what kind of mafia princess my character is going to be.

I keep growing and evolving. A writer has to do this constantly or get left behind because you can’t just do the same thing over and over. My next project is an historical romance set in 1066.

You have to keep on keeping on. It’s hard, but nothing comes easy. And this sure is fun! °