Author: Emma

Emma Barry is a teacher, novelist, recovering academic, and former political staffer. She lives with her high school sweetheart and a menagerie of pets and children in Virginia, and she occasionally finds time to read and write.

Both Alike in Dignity

Over the weekend my friend and critique partner Gen Turner started a Twitter imbroglio when she confessed that she doesn’t really connect with the novels of Jane Austen. I was traveling so I didn’t get to follow all the nuances of the ensuing discussion, but several of us posited that there seems to be a schism in romancelandia (and probably the broader culture) between folks who love the novels of Jane Austen and those who prefer those by the Bronte sisters. Elisabeth Lane compared it to the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate.

If so, it makes sense. While Austen died in 1817 when the Bronte sisters were infants, Charlotte Bronte famously disliked Austen’s novels, saying Pride and Prejudice was “An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face” or, in other words, realistic but boring. In another letter Charlotte Bronte wrote, “The Passions are perfectly unknown to [Austen].”

There’s a lot I could say here about how Austen is more properly grouped with the 18th century novelists than the 19th century ones. Austen has a more Enlightenment view of human nature and love, not to mention that she wrote novels with strong romantic elements not genre romances per se. In contrast the Brontes–who are hardly a united front as my favorite Kate Beaton cartoon spoofs–were more influenced by Romanticism and Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” They also wrote for a vastly different audience.

But that’s not my area of expertise and so I’ll refrain.

Instead I want to suggest that Austen/Bronte debate is unnecessarily adversarial. Genre romance descends from both, as Pamela Regis explicates nicely in A Natural History of the Romance Novel, but I’m going to argue that genre romance uses Austen and Bronte for different things. To my mind, Austen provides a set of plots for romance and Charlotte Bronte provides an aesthetic for romance prose.

Continue reading “Both Alike in Dignity” →

Good. What else?

Without a doubt, the thing I say most frequently in the classroom is, “Good. What else?”

You always want the students to move from one point to the next logical step, from one example to another, from one intertextual connection to another. Learning is a constant state of dissatisfaction. You keep pressing onward, but you never arrive because it’s not about a destination. It’s about a journey.

Writing is similar. I’ve published four novels in 22 months, but my career is in stasis. I don’t have anything contracted or scheduled. I’m writing but I don’t like the words. And it’s hard to confront my own slowness and ennui because it makes it real. This business is an endless “Good, what else?” merry-go-round, and I feel like I’ve fallen off.

And as I’m sitting there in the dirt, watching the merry-go-round spin, and wondering whether I need to publish every three months, or is it five to six projects a year, or maybe one book a month would do it…I remember: it’s about a journey. I don’t have to have all the answers. Hell, I don’t even have to have completed projects or a five-year plan. Those things would be lovely, of course. But for now, it’s all very simple.

One foot, then the next. One word, one clause, one sentence. They build to a paragraph and then another.

Good. What else?

Social Justice Romance Fiction

Someone found my blog through the search phrase “social justice romance fiction,” which is indeed what The Easy Part series is. But the query got me thinking about other romances featuring characters interested in social justice, which might include activists, volunteers, revolutionaries, political aides, community organizers, and so on. I asked on Twitter for suggestions and then started a list on Goodreads. I feel like a goober adding my own books…but I did it anyway. If you’re a Goodreads user, please add, edit, vote, etc.

It does raise a few interesting questions for me: is every police officer or fireman romance a social justice one? What about teachers? Or doctors? I guess the list-makers at Goodreads will decide.

Women, Depression, and the Obscene

(Prologue: this is the latest entry in my series of late night thoughts about romance fueled by random association and too much graduate school. Please keep in mind that while I may be pretentious and use words like companionate and displaced melancholy, my characters are much healthier and cooler than I am and would never do that.)

In Black Sun the psychoanalytical critic Julia Kristeva analyzes the place where depression and creativity meet: for the depressive, “there is meaning only in despair” (Kristeva 6). She defines depression/melancholy as “a common experience of object loss and of a modification of significant bonds” (Kristeva 10, emphasis in original). Her argument is extremely Freudian: the depressive hates the other because it (the other) is separated from the self; however, they can be symbolically reunited in sex and/or death. But (because this is Freudian) the depressive doesn’t openly mourn or even hate the other. Instead the grief is displaced onto a Thing: “an imagined sun, bright and black at the same time” (Kristeva 13). But since the depressive is displacing his/her grief, the “depressive affect can be interpreted as a defense again” personality destruction (Kristeva 19, emphasis in original). I’m over-simplifying here dramatically, but you get the gist of it.

Continue reading “Women, Depression, and the Obscene” →

Come a Little Closer

(Warning: I was up with a sick child all night. When I’m not sleeping, I’m thinking. And I have to write this idea out. It isn’t fully-formed, but tell me where I’m wrong so I can finish working this out.)

In The Melodramatic Imagination, literary scholar Peter Brooks defines melodrama not as something aesthetic–not in other words as a genre defined by mustache-twirling villains, perfect heroes, and damsels in distress–but as a narrative structure and a moral imperative. He writes of a scene in Balzac’s novel The Magic Skin,

The narrative voice is not content to describe or record gestures, to see it simply as a figure in the interplay of persons one with another. Rather, the narrator applies pressure to the gesture, pressure through interrogation, through the evocation of more and more fantastic possibilities, to make it yield meaning to make it give up to consciousness its full potential as “parable.” (1)

Brooks is saying that Balzac pushes closer to his subjects in order “to catch this essential drama, to go beyond the surface of the real to the truer, hidden reality” underneath (2). Brooks argues that in melodrama “nothing is left unsaid” (4), which helps to reveal the “operative spiritual values” (5) that are present but hidden in other works. He applies this schema to Henry James, in whose work he sees this “melodramatic imagination” operating when “things and gestures are necessarily metaphoric because they must refer to something else” (Brooks 10).

As far as I can tell, no one has applied Peter Brooks to genre romance–but we should because romance seems to work in much the same way. Romance is closely cropped onto a few key pieces that carry metaphorical significance and its narrative resolutions (e.g., the creation of a stable couple) are moral ones.

Continue reading “Come a Little Closer” →

Happy Valentine’s Day!

“It’s not Valentine’s yet,” you reply.

“Yes, but tomorrow I’m headed away for a romantic weekend so I’m posting for V-Day now,” I say.

Who doesn’t like early presents?

This is not widely known but the first book I published was called Brave in Heart, a historical romance set during the American Civil War. Basically no one read it. And I can’t blame you all because beyond the setting, it’s very first-book-y. But had anyone read it, I intended for it to be the first book in a series. I had, in fact, started a sequel, which I never named, except then I started writing the book that became Special Interests and that project consumed me.

However, when I started to think about what kind of Valentine’s Day extra I could publish, I started to think about the words I’d written for the Brave in Heart sequel. Most of them aren’t great…except for these.

So if you read this, know that I don’t like the chapters I wrote after this one. And between my dissatisfaction with the rest of those chapters and a marketplace that’s not terribly interested in mid-nineteenth century American historical, I probably won’t ever finish this. But as long as we’re on the same page, this is your Valentine’s present from me: a meet-cute and a one very sexy, Creole, not-quite gentleman named August Wainwright.

Smooches~

Emma

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10 Romantic Books to Read…Because Romance is Awesome

Today, Book Riot published a piece entitled “5 Romantic Books to Read in February (even if you hate romance).”

I could rant about this (see me respond to romance trolls here and here), but I don’t want to–not because the assumptions and commentary in the Book Riot list aren’t frustrating but because I’d rather celebrate the wonderful writing that I see in genre romance.

Every book here I’ve recommended to friends and family. Many I’ve forced onto people when they insist to me, “No, I don’t like romance.” I can’t say that every one of these conversion attempts has succeeded–but these books all have sharp writing, smart plots, and fascinating characters. These are perfect for February or July or anytime; they aren’t organized in any particular order.

1.) The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley, novel with strong romantic elements

Kearsley’s prose is lovely. Anyone who thinks the writing in romance is substandard should pick her books up. From the opening page of The Winter Sea, they’ll find a strong sense of history and place and not one but two compelling romances. Once I’d started it, I could not put it down. I’ve given easily half a dozen copies as gifts, and almost everyone I’ve gifted it to has gone on to read everything Kearsley has published.

2.) The Iron Duke, Meljean Brook, steampunk
Brook writes my favorite steampunk world in the Iron Sea series and any of the books or novellas in it would be good for those individuals who think they don’t like romance. (It’s worth saying that the titular Iron Duke does something almost unforgivable in this book.) Brook’s prose is crisp and compelling, the characterizations interesting, and the world, well, riveting. If this series isn’t adapted into a film, I’ll be pissed.
3.) Welcome to Temptation, Jennifer Crusie, contemporary
As far as I’m concerned, Crusie is the queen of smart, hilarious contemporary romances. This dance between grifter-adjacent Sophie Dempsey and small town mayor Phin Tucker is my favorite. The dialogue is delightful and the chemistry sizzling.

Continue reading “10 Romantic Books to Read…Because Romance is Awesome” →

My Favorite Bits: The Easy Part

Two and a half weeks ago, Party Lines released. In the push to get the book out and recover from the holidays, I don’t think it hit me that I wrote a series–three loosely connected books. And edited it. And now it’s all out.

The Easy Part books can be read in any order but they explore the same theme: the characters have reached the outer edge of young adulthood and are realizing they are unsatisfied with their lives. They are smart, ambitious people who want to change the world, but they haven’t yet and, frankly, they’re unlikely to. But that knowledge is freeing. It permits them to redefine what success means and who they want to share it with while they work to pass a federal budget (Special Interests), expose a corruption scandal (Private Politics), and get someone elected president (Party Lines).

I’d definitely do some things differently if I could have the first books back, but I’m fiercely proud of all three novels.

So as a thank you to everyone who’s read the books and reviewed them and talked with me about them, I wanted to revisit some of my favorite moments.

Warning: minor spoilers ahead!

Continue reading “My Favorite Bits: The Easy Part” →

Purple Haze

…or more precisely, why I don’t think all romance is properly categorized as containing purple prose–and why I don’t think that would be bad even if it were true.

What precisely is purple prose? According to A Handbook to Literature by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman (8th Edition), a “purple patch” is

Now and then authors in a strongly emotional passage will give free play to most of the stylistic tricks in their bag. They will write prose intensely colorful and more than usually rhythmic. When there is an unusual piling up of these devices in such a way as to suggest standing out a self-conscious literary effort, the section is spoken of as a purple patch … Although sometimes used in a nonevaluative, descriptive sense, the term is more often employed derogatorily. (421)

I eliminated a few sentences explaining the reference to Horace, but this is a workable definition. Purple prose is excessively descriptive for its context and that, therefore, draws attention to itself.

Genre romance regularly stands accused of trafficking in purple prose. The Missouri Review ran a column in 2013 comparing Nora Robert’s descriptions of sex (“absurd”) to Nabokov’s in Lolita (“poetic”). Such accusations are so common that AAR use to run a purple prose parody contest. And certainly love scenes lend themselves to description. The Literary Review awards an annual bad sex in fiction award–one that invariably goes to a literary novel.

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Party Lines: Release Day

I’m fascinated by opposites-attract love affairs. All romances include components of this; we don’t want to see people who are too similar fall in love–where’s the fun in that? But some chasms are more difficult than others to bridge. And in politics, party affiliation might be the most charged of all.

A year ago, I was writing a book about a secret affair on the campaign trail between two ambitious, jaded people who can’t seem to shake each other. They yield to the inevitable…and well, things get more complicated from there. There is banter and lots of clandestine meetings in hotel rooms. There’s a scandal and an election. And despite all their best intentions for there not to be, there just might be love too.

Party Lines Cover

That book was Party Lines and today it’s available at Amazon, B&N, Carina, iBooks, Kobo, All Romance, and Google Play. You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves.

I’ve written about it here, but also elsewhere. A few other pieces will go up throughout the week and I’ll update this post as they do.

– If you haven’t already, check out the book’s Pinterest board. It’s mostly music (no pictures of Michael and Lydia); if you email me, I’ll share my secret celebrity inspirations.

–  At the Carina blog, I wrote about the folks behind the podium and why they’re the heroes and heroines of The Easy Part series.

– There’s an exclusive excerpt at A Little Bit Tart, A Little Bit Sweet.

ETA:

– Also at the Carina blog, I wrote about the thin line between love and hate.