Claire Cowling's Blog
Posted by Claire Cowling
Well, after what I thought was going to be a great start to the year - a year of encouraging reading various forms of the kind of fiction I would love to see people reading - I have been very quiet on Suite 101. It's mainly due to a foul virus which rendered my eyes virtually incapable of seeing a computer screen. As such, Romance Fiction has been neglected, and it really doesn't deserve to be. It's such a fabulous genre.
The world hasn't stood still, however, even if I have (for a short while), and the winner of the Romantic Novelists' Association Novel of the Year Award for 2009 has been announced. You will find more details in my article, especially if you want to seek out some of the best and most recent contemporary romance novels.
And the news won't stop there, I promise you. I have a variety of feature articles lined up, giving you a taste of romance from the past through to the present. There will be interviews with some of the newest authors, news of up and coming conventions and awards, together with reviews of the best and most intriguing novels around. And this is where you come in.
The Romance Fiction section has some regular writers, but how many more of you are there who read romantic fiction time and again for pleasure? How many readeers could benefit from your insight into the literature you read? So I send out a plea to all those who are passionate about romance, write your reviews and articles on romantic fiction and post them for everyone to see. It is only this way that we may know what is going on in the Romance Fiction world. After all, if you're reading the articles posted on Suite 101, then you clearly have discerning tastes. Please help bring the romance back to our readers.
Posted by Claire Cowling
Firstly, as I've not actually said it yet - Happy New Year. I don't know what kind of New Year's resolutions you've made - if any - but one of mine is to ensure I take enough time off from my own writing of short stories to read plenty of other people's.
Fabulous literature does not have to come in the shape of doorstop-sized novels. I'm not, of course, knocking novels (I read plenty of them), but I have a special fondness for short stories. In them a reader can be surprised, made to laugh aloud, terrified, or find hidden depth of emotion that they never throught possible, all wrapped up in just a few pages. No words can be wasted in a short story. There just isn't room, so if an emotion is created in you when you read, you can guarantee it will hit you hard and fast.
Short stories great for reading on short trips - on the underground, for instance - or in a lunch hour when time is short and you actually want to complete a piece of fiction rather than finding that you have to stop because you're going to be in trouble with the boss if you don't get back to work! But where can you find stories that are high quality and suited to your tastes in fiction?
Well, it depends on what kind of story you're into. The women's magazines still publish short stories, although not as many as they used to. But don't be fooled into thinking they are twee and only about happily married couples, little old ladies and family parties. The subjects which are dealt with are often much more intense than this. For instance, a recent story I had published in a women's magazine involved a woman who had begun to resent her husband and couldn't bring herself to love her little boy because he he had a heart defect and ahe was scared that she would love him, only to lose him. See- not quite your happy family story, is it?!
I would personally advocate literary magazines, such as Mslexia, and the small preses, such as Legend Press, for high quality short stories. Ones which are included in the magazines and in small press anthologies are diverse in subject, length and mood. You are sure to find stories which you both like and might never have read otherwise. And the literary magazines and small presses could certainly do with reader support and the revenue brought in from subscriptions to the magazines and readers buying the books.
Unfortunately, many publishers in the mainstream don't publish short fiction. The reason is that not enough profit is made from the sales of short story collections and they are therefore not worth the trouble because not enough of the general public buy them. Maybe someone should be brave enough to take the bull by the horns and force the short story out into the limelight and test the general public's interest. There are many, many people who love reading. Why should it only be four hundred page complex plotlines? Try reading some short fiction in 2009. If you don't, then you'll never know how wonderful it is to be captivated by every word of a moment in time.
Posted by Claire Cowling
Posted by Claire Cowling
Each time I go into my local newsagent's, or I read one of the writing magazines I subscribe to, I seem to discover the sad news that the demise of the short story in women's magazines is still going on. My latest disappointment was when I realised that a magazine I was busily writing for had cut its word count for short stories by a few hundred words. This in turn made me feel like I was writing flash fiction, instead of the rounded, wonderful (honest!) piece of work it orginally had been.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing at all against flash fiction, aside from the fact that I am apalling at writing it! What I do find irritating is that I speak to many women in the course of my everyday existence and those who buy women's magazines all say that they enjoy the fiction - some saying that they have actually changed their regular magazine to one which only or virtually only includes fiction, in order to get something which they termed as worth reading. Yet the magazines in general do not all seem to have grasped this.
Instead, there are ample women's mags out there which focus on nothing but the tawdry lives of supposed celebrities, fashion and make-up and leave nothing for the reader to get their teeth into and allow them a degree of escapism, albeit for only five minutes or so while drinking a cup of coffee. I, however, do applaud the ones who stick to their guns and refuse to lose their fiction content, even if they have to change the style of fiction accepted whenever the magazine undergoes a facelift.
Books are a massive seller worldwide, with romance being the biggest selling genre. Surley, then, there has to be room for even just a page of Coffee Break Fiction, centred around relationships, if that is the kind of fiction the readers want. Surely it is better to give the consumer something extra rather than lose them to a competitor? And, believe me, short story writers would really appreciate it, too!
What do you think? I would be interested to hear your thoughts, whichever side of the argument, or the publishing fence, you sit on.
Posted by Claire Cowling
