In Memoriam

The romance publishing industry has lost one of its greatest advocates today.

In her long career of 35 years, Kate Duffy worked with Dell, Pocket Books, and Paddington Press (London) as a senior editor; editor-in-chief of Silhouette Books, Tudor Publishing, and Meteor Publishing; and editorial director at Kensington.

She was funny, irreverent, and passionate about books and writing. Watch her in action on YouTube. During an interview for A Romance Review, when Lori Foster asked her, "What’s your favorite part of being an editor?", Kate replied "The enormous paycheck. Oh, how I crack myself up. No the answer is—great writing and being the first to read it."

Author Mary Jo Putney says on Word Wenches, "[She] was a legend in the romance industry, known for her humor, her directness, her concern for authors, and her passion for the romance genre." Author Teresa Medeiros on Twitter, "From the very beginning of her career, Kate Duffy was one of the staunchest supporters of romance. She loved it as much as we do. My heart is broken! I adored Kate!" Leave it to the Squawkers to get at the heart of who Kate Duffy was with their interview by Kitty Kuttlestone.

The best tribute comes from Sarah Wendell: "She’s the Julia Child of romance!"

Kate's most famous admonishment to authors was: "Get off the Internet, and write!"

My October List

These are the books I'm looking for to next month:

Captive of the Sin by Anna Campbell

The Most Wicked of Sins by Kathryn Caskie

A Lady of Persuasion by Tessa Dare

Necessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie

Lord Wraybourne's Bethrothed by Jo Beverly

The Lone Texan by Jodi Thomas

The Heart of Christmas by Mary Balogh, Nicola Cornick, Courtney Milan

Urgent Care by C.J. Lyons

Sizzling Seduction by Gwyneth Bolton

What's on your list? Any other suggestions for me?

Picture Day Friday

This 7th Century Saxon gold strip carries the Latin inscription: "Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face" from Psalm 67, taken from the Vulgate, the Bible used by the Saxons.



In July, the UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure was discovered buried beneath a field in South Staffordshire by Terry Herbert using a metal detector. Experts say the collection of nearly 1,500 gold and silver pieces containing warfare paraphernalia, including sword pommel caps and hilt plates inlaid with precious stones, is unparalleled in size and worth "a seven figure sum". The above gold strip is part of the haul.

Celebrating the Freedom to Read

We make a big song-n-dance about the Freedom of Speech here in America, but Freedom to Read is like a poor relation twice removed. Without the freedom to read, freedom to speak has no meaning. Without the infusion of new thoughts and new ideas, what in the world would you speak about?

Banned Books Week (BBW) by the American Library Association (ALA) serves to highlight the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books. BBW also stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them. While not every book is intended for every reader, each of us has the right to decide for ourselves what to read.

Since 1990, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has recorded more than 10,000 book challenges, including 513 in 2008. (A challenge is a formal, written complaint requesting a book be removed from library shelves or school curriculum.) About three out of four of all challenges are to material in schools or school libraries, and one in four are to material in public libraries. OIF estimates that less than one-quarter of challenges are reported and recorded.

This is horrifying. In this day and age, when we talk about the advances our civilization has made. WhAt?! WhErE?! Every time we limit access to even one book, we take a giant step back to our caveman days.

This year, BBW will be from September 26 to October 3. Go forth, and celebrate! And read!

[Edited 9/27: A different look at recent banned books: map of the country.]

Popular Romance Conference in Belgium

A Call For Proposals

for

The 2nd Annual International Conference on Popular Romance

Popular Romance Studies: Theory, Text and Practice

Brussels, Belgium
5-7 August, 2010

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) is seeking proposals for innovative panels, papers, roundtables, discussion groups, and multi-media presentations that contribute to a sustained conversation about romantic love and its representations in popular media throughout the world, from antiquity to the present. We welcome analyses of individual textsbooks, films, websites, songs, performances, as well as broader inquiries into the creative industries that produce and market popular romance and into the emerging critical practice of popular romance studies.

This conference has three main goals:

To bring to bear contemporary critical theory on the texts and contexts of popular romance, in all forms and media, from all national and cultural traditions

To foster comparative and intercultural analyses of popular romance, by documenting and/or theorizing what happens to tropes and texts as they move across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries

To explore the relationships between popular romance tropes and texts as they circulate between elite and popular culture, between different media (e.g., from novel to film, or from song to music video), between cultural representations and the lived experience of readers, viewers, listeners, and lovers

After the conference, proceedings will be subjected to peer-review and published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS).

IASPR is pleased and proud to announce that the Keynote Speakers for the conference will be:
Celestino Deleyto, University of Zaragoza, Spain
Lynne Pearce, Lancaster University, UK
Pamela Regis, McDaniel College, USA

Please submit proposals by January 1, 2010. Direct questions to: conferences@iaspr.org.

We are currently pursuing funds to help defray the cost of travel to Belgium for the conference. If these funds become available, we will notify those accepted how to apply for support from IASPR.

(Please circulate this CFP far and wide!)

Romance Needs You

Harlequin is running their annual survey. All that positive press that we've been seeing in leading media outlets this year, stems mainly from Harlequin's and Romance Writers of America's surveys. So these surveys are very important to portray an accurate picture of the state of our industry.

Please do you bit. Take the survey!