From the Garret: Archives

Press Encounters of the Lurid Kind

This is my lucky day! I thought as I raced to the elevator banks at the Romance Writers of America's national conference in July.

My mad dash began when I walked into the pressroom to add my hotel room number to the publicity information on file for me. Charis Calhoon, RWA's Communications Manager, scanned my publishing history (first-time author, book not even released yet) and said, "Would you be willing to talk with a reporter from the New York Post? He's already interviewed Jennifer Crusie, Nora Roberts, and Julia Quinn and he wants to talk with someone at the beginning of her career." How could I refuse? Why would I even consider refusing? "Do you have a copy of your book?"

I had one precious copy of A Bridge to Love, but I was willing to sacrifice it to the cause of publicity in a New York City paper with a circulation in the millions.

"Go get it."

As I was riding the elevator back down with my book clutched in my hand, I ran over all the advice I had read about doing interviews. Keep it positive, even if the reporter refers to your book as a bodice-ripper. Quote the sales and readership figures. If the reporter asks why you write pornography, calmly explain the difference between romance and smut. And so forth.

Romance writers are generally not treated well by the media.

My interviewer, however, was a charming young man from somewhere in the Mid-west. He admired my cover, took copious notes on my career prior to becoming a romance writer, discussed the marketing of my book, and did not once mention the words "bodice" or "ripper". The article would appear on Saturday, two days from the interview. I was thrilled.

The next day, the Post sent a photographer, this time a delightful young woman, to my first book-signing ever. She spent forty-five minutes taking professional photographs of me autographing books, standing on the streets of New York, and posing in the grand ballroom of the hotel. She showed me several of the photos on her digital camera and they were terrific.

Saturday morning, I raced down to the newsstand in the hotel and grabbed the top copy of the Post. Furiously flipping through the pages, I found the section the reporter had specified about three quarters of the way through the paper.

"Romancing the tome," the headline read. "Writers meet and let the bodices rip."

That wasn't the horror though. It was the graphic, a giant color mock-up of a romance cover. In classic clinch style, a handsome, bare-chested Native American gentleman had his arms around a buxom lady whose dress was sliding off her shoulders…but the head on the woman's shoulders was mine! Neat pageboy haircut, wire-rimmed glasses, friendly but professional smile; it was all there. Even worse, my name was written on the cover in inch-and-a-half high letters.

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

Then I read the article in which the reporter quoted Jennifer Crusie, Nora Roberts and…me. Except he quoted me out of context. Yes, I said those words (except for the sex scene he lifted from the pages of A Bridge to Love) but not in that order or in response to the comments around them. Never before have I realized how a statement's meaning can be utterly changed by its setting. My first thought was, "Charis Calhoon is going to be really upset."

My second thought was, "My mother-in-law is reading this."

Charis, however, was resigned; she understood the risks of dealing with the press from long experience. "It could have been worse," she said. Fellow authors comforted me with comments ranging from "Does your husband know about your gorgeous new boyfriend?" to "Hey, your name is in bigger letters than Nora Roberts'." Inspirational author Robin Lee Hatcher, who has received even worse treatment from the media, commiserated with me in the hotel lobby.

My mother-in-law was not happy.

Have I reached the point where I've framed the article and hung it in my office? Not yet. It still makes me cringe, especially since it keeps reappearing, most recently in Romantic Times BookClub magazine. I've never really subscribed to the maxim that any press is good press.

However, I learned a valuable lesson: when you put yourself in the hands of the media in the search for publicity, you can't predict the outcome. You certainly can't control it.

I keep doing it though, repeating my mantra always to be positive and rational. Most reporters are accurate in capturing both the facts and the feel of an interview. Most, in fact, go the extra mile to do so.

The next time I meet a New York Post reporter though, my first and only statement is going to be: "no comment."