Panel Review: All Roads Lead to Romance
Jan. 14th, 2021 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
militantlyromanticI attended this panel hosted by Cary Library last evening. Cary has startlingly good romance programming, particularly for a library in New England.
The panel was made up of James Riley, who's about to enter the contemporary romance field but still holds a job as a freelance journalist, Vanessa Riley, who has her own software company but came out of big tech to write romance, Kate Bateman, who was an antiques and art appraiser and auctioneer before her career shift, Eloisa James, who still considers herself a professor first, and Nisha Sharma, who still consults on diversity law, but is primarily a writer as of now. The idea was to show how romance is fairly open to a number of backgrounds, and that many backgrounds feed into it.
I enjoyed a lot of the stories that were shared, hearing about how people had come to be in the romance field. Nisha and Vanessa talked about overcoming racial barriers, both of them having had similar experiences and handled them in different ways. They talked about getting rejections, about the balance between trusting an editor and trusting yourself as a writer.
I had hoped there would be a bit more concrete discussion about things such as, Vanessa self-pubbed for a while because of wanting to write historicals with Black protags, which none of the major houses would take at that time. And I would have liked to hear how she found cover art, an editor, what kind of marketing she did. I also would be interested in the differences between that and taking a publishing contract. Given that all of the participants who were full time writers were partnered, it also wasn't clear to me if even with a house contract, it's a living.
Granted, this is honestly more curiosity than anything. Most of what I think about writing is not the sort of thing that sells in droves, even if I was brilliant, and I'd place myself more firmly in the middle of the pack. The logistics of self-publishing, though, would be very helpful. Thankfully, I have friends who will talk me through that, but it never hurts to have more knowledge.
In any case, histrom has been filled with the Anti-Semitism of Ignorance this last week, with not one but two lists from major organizations recommending The Grand Sophy, and it was nice to just be in a non-toxic space for an hour and a half.
The panel was made up of James Riley, who's about to enter the contemporary romance field but still holds a job as a freelance journalist, Vanessa Riley, who has her own software company but came out of big tech to write romance, Kate Bateman, who was an antiques and art appraiser and auctioneer before her career shift, Eloisa James, who still considers herself a professor first, and Nisha Sharma, who still consults on diversity law, but is primarily a writer as of now. The idea was to show how romance is fairly open to a number of backgrounds, and that many backgrounds feed into it.
I enjoyed a lot of the stories that were shared, hearing about how people had come to be in the romance field. Nisha and Vanessa talked about overcoming racial barriers, both of them having had similar experiences and handled them in different ways. They talked about getting rejections, about the balance between trusting an editor and trusting yourself as a writer.
I had hoped there would be a bit more concrete discussion about things such as, Vanessa self-pubbed for a while because of wanting to write historicals with Black protags, which none of the major houses would take at that time. And I would have liked to hear how she found cover art, an editor, what kind of marketing she did. I also would be interested in the differences between that and taking a publishing contract. Given that all of the participants who were full time writers were partnered, it also wasn't clear to me if even with a house contract, it's a living.
Granted, this is honestly more curiosity than anything. Most of what I think about writing is not the sort of thing that sells in droves, even if I was brilliant, and I'd place myself more firmly in the middle of the pack. The logistics of self-publishing, though, would be very helpful. Thankfully, I have friends who will talk me through that, but it never hurts to have more knowledge.
In any case, histrom has been filled with the Anti-Semitism of Ignorance this last week, with not one but two lists from major organizations recommending The Grand Sophy, and it was nice to just be in a non-toxic space for an hour and a half.
