Pam Writes Romance

Hello. I had really hoped a scintilating post idea was going to strike me, but as you can tell by my creative title, none did. Since I have nothing and there are more than enough items on the daily news to pull us down, this post is just going to be for cheap laughs. Get ‘em while they’re fresh!

And speaking of the daily news…

Or other scary wildlife…

This one is for Robin:

And this one is for L.A. especially, but also for Marilyn, myself, and any other 80’s lovin’ babes out there:

(And yes, I did notice they misspelled Ric as Rick. Obviously an 80’s lovin’ babe did not create this one.)

And my absolute snort-diet-Coke-up-my-nose, spray-it-on-my-poor-monitor favorite:

Hope this brightened your day. Better post next week, I promise!

Warning: This is a disconnected, possibly confusing, catch-up and miscellaneous post. If you watched the ending of ‘Life on Mars’ or have ever listened to a Paula Abdul critique on ‘American Idol’, you should have no problems keeping up. If not, an emergency exit is located at the little red X at the top of the page.

I’ve thought it incredibly curious that some part of my recent blog traffic has been driven by searches of phrases like “clean house” and “Monica’s apartment”, no doubt due to this post. Since I am desperate for publicity, readers, and people to like me, I’m going to start scattering my posts with random phrases that I think people will be googling and see if I get any hits. In the spirit of my first random phrase, I say…and now for something completely different.

“Ministry of Silly Walks”

I did get my edits/rewrites done on BROKEN and my lovely dark historical is winging its way to my beta readers (or already there.) I didn’t quite make my deadline, so I’ve cut myself off from chocolate for a little bit, but I’m going to claim an exemption on the duct tape. I think that’s a threat best used for a really heinous deadline. (Due to my poor typing skills, I just realized that “threat” is just “treat” with the letter ‘h’ added. Hmmm…that’s a little too DaVinci code, don’t you think?)

“Jump the Shark”

One huge thing going on next month is the amazing Brenda Novak auction for diabetes research. Dig between the cushions of your couch, claw under your car seat, sell your “Death of Superman” mint edition comic book—anything to raise some extra cash. Then go here and look at all of the fabulous things Brenda has up for auction in May. I’m serious. Yes, she has amazing opportunities for writers (and I mean A. May. Zing.), but she also has great things for readers and lots of just fun stuff. She’s hoping to raise over $300,000 for diabetes research this year and I say we help her do it.

“Brangelina”

I’m going to call it good right there. Any more and I’ll officially enter ‘rambling’ territory, and at that point it’s just being mean to make you keep reading. Especially about Brangelina.

Sometime this weekend, while my brain was in screensaver mode, an interesting thought bubbled to the surface like my own personal version of Pop-Up Video. It struck me that the current decade of movies has been awfully super-hero heavy, and I mean that from capes and tights to swords and wands. It made me wonder about movies and the current socio-economic culture, comparing the current decade to the 1990s. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s look at the lists, shall we?

According to this site, here is a list of the top 25 grossing films of the 1990s and the 2000s. (I actually had a little trouble finding this information, thinking I’d find OfficialMovieResults.com but there was no such thing. Or I got lazy and didn’t look hard enough. However, this site feels okay enough for me to go with it and I think will illustrate my point.)

Look at the 1990s. There’s a wide variety of movies in there, everything from Toy Story to Forrest Gump to Dances with Wolves to Liar Liar. It feels like there was a little more stretching by the public, a little more willingness to watch a movie that really wrenched your heart out. (Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, even Ghost)

Now look at the 2000s. Of the top 25, I counted 16 (in italics) that were in my capes/tights/swords/wands category—that’s practically 2/3 of the list (64%). And of the remaining 9, 3 were cartoons, 2 were sci-fi/fantasy, 1 was action/adventure, 1 was comedy, and the oddball was The Passion of the Christ (and I’m not touching that one with a ten foot pole.) By my reckoning, the public wanted to see the good guy win the day, be he an Everyman (Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean or Sam Witwicky in Transformers), a Superhero (Batman or Spiderman), or a Wizard (Harry Potter, Gandalf.) It seems as though we, the public, wanted a hero bad enough to let our movies give us one, even if he/she was only imaginary.

Now I know the theory that ‘good times allow for a wide range of creative endeavors/bad times call for feel-good entertainment’ is nothing new. Heck, last week the New York Times did an article on romance writing titled Recession Fuels Readers’ Escapist Urges. If that doesn’t illustrate this theory, I don’t know what does.  

So, for all of us fiction writers, is this recession a good thing for us? I guess only time will tell. I know the flip side of the coin is that with the recession, getting published is more of a struggle, so where the public may want your type of book, the slots in the line just may not be there.  

But, this is me and my glass is half-full. I know the slots are there for good stories and good writers, recession be damned. So, I will practice my craft, and develop my voice, and maybe one day, one of my books will be on a list.

With a lot of zeros after it.