Sunday, August 24, 2008

To Each His Own

Besides being the title of an old romantic ballad played and sung by Eddie Howard in the forties and fifties, the title as used here is a reflection on a post by Grace Scott, my partner in this blog.

A couple of posts back, she made the point that romance is in the mind of the person who defines it. Each person decides what the word "romance" means to him or her. I agree wholeheartedly with Grace and just for the heck of it, I thought I'd jot down some thoughts on the way I view romance without attempting to define it.

First, I think most people believe that women are more romantic than men. Women are supposed to be romantic by nature whereas men are thought of as pragmatic get-it-done types with little time for romantic interludes. This belief may or may not pass the holds-water test. I suggest that women are more open about their romantic feelings than men because male culture tends to dampen overt signs of romanticism. Male peer pressure is very powerful. No man wants to be thought of as weak or sissified or feminine. But that doesn't mean men lack romanticism, merely that they aren't as open about it as women. I would argue that some men are highly romantic, some are not. As Grace says, it's an individual thing.

I also have observed generational differences in perceptions of romance. For those who care to listen to the music of past generations, they may be struck by the lack of overt and blatant sexuality in the tempo and lyrics of music in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. That doesn't mean sex didn't exist then, merely that it wasn't flaunted in public as it often is today. Softness seems to give rise to romantic feelings whereas much of the music and lyrics today seem focused on sex. In my judgment, there is romantic sex and then there is sex for the sake of sex. I may be wrong about that, but I perceive a good deal of sex for the sake of sex today with an added element. Many people today seem proud and unashamed of their encounters, even keeping track with Excel spreadsheets. I'm old fashioned about this, certainly, but I see no respect for the other person in these sorts of activities and certainly no romance.

My third an final observation concerns concepts of romance in different cultures. Not all societies and cultures share the American version of romance. Some cultures, like Japan, still, even in this modern era, encourage arranged marriages and discourages romantic engagements. But oddly, within this framework, romance thrives in such beliefs that gray hair is a desirable romantic commodity in a man. A man in Japan with a streak of gray hair is referred to as having "romance gray." In the Philippines, music is a predominant vehicle for the encouragement of soft romance. The music of the Philippines is largely the music of Spain and it is centered around romantic ballads. Filipinos love to dance and we all know that dancing is a sure fire enhancement of a romantic relationship.

Okay, these are my thoughts on romance. What are yours? Let us know your opinions about romance and about your own romantic stories.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Horseman's Secret

I've just finished reading my third Jeannie Watt romance novel, The Horseman's Secret. I said my third, not Jeannie's third. Her third was The Brother Returns, a sequel to Horseman, which I read first followed by A Difficult Woman, her first published novel. Confusing, eh? Sorry. That's just the way my mind works.

How come I didn't read the two intertwined stories in sequence? I couldn't locate The Horseman's Secret. My daughter was kind enough to scout around for me until she found one at a Barnes and Noble. She mailed it and I received it yesterday, opened the box and began reading.

I wasn't at all disappointed that I read it out of sequence. Both The Brother Returns and The Horseman's Secret are stand-alone novels. No prior knowledge of the story lines is needed for the full enjoyment of either.

However, since I already knew the horseman's secret, I took a different tack when I read the book. At first, I scanned through it, and then I decided to read it more thoroughly not for the romance between the two main characters, Regan Flynn and Will Bishop, but for the atmosphere that Jeannie Watt so eloquently and familiarly weaves into her stories.

As luck would have it, I fell in love with one of the characters despite my initial resolution. A special horse captured my attention as soon as it came into the story, a horse named Skitters, so called for its tendency to jump and buck unexpectedly. Will Bishop bought Skitters for his daughter Kylie, but soon realized that the horse wasn't suitable for her. He resolved to get rid of Skitters, but Kylie had already fallen in love with it. So here we have Will conflicted between Kylie's happiness and her safety. The ending to Skitter's story is just absolutely pluperfect. If you want to know what it is, you'll have to beg, borrow, or buy the book.

While reading for cowboy atmosphere, a couple of terms popped up in the novel that brought back some old memories. One was Bluetick, as in a hound dog used in the South largely for hunting 'coons, raccoons. I wondered what the heck Nevadans used Blueticks for. Still do. Gotta do some research on it.

The other term Jeannie used was hay flake. At first that one puzzled me. Then I shifted into image mode and tried to visualize a hay flake. Was it loose hay stirred up in the wind and drifting to Earth like snoflakes? Obviously that wasn't it because Jeannie mentioned feeding a small horse one hay flake and a larger horse two snow flakes.

Then it came to me. A hay flake is a section of a bale of hay. When the wire holding a bale together is cut, the bale spreads apart much like an accordian. Those spread-out segments are hay flakes. I'd seen them as a kid.

None of this has much if anything to do with romance to most folks, but I'm reminded that the West and cowboys occupay a special place in the mythology of America. The American West is a romanticized vision of the founding myth of America, a solid, determined, indepentent individual braving the odds to make a new life in the West.

This vision is embodied in novels and stories and movies galore. My first exposure to the romantic West was the old Saturday afternoon Western. That was followed by the novels of Zane Grey.

Now, we have authors like Jeannie Watt presenting great romances set in the modern West. I'm eagerly awaiting her Cop on Loan scheduled for release in October 2008. I don't know anything at all about the book's plot or setting, but I've spent some time speculating. We'll see how close my thoughts are to the actual story. One thing I am almost certain about. It will be set in Nevada, a very special spot with cowboys and beautiful maidens galore. If she shifts the location elsewhere, I would be greatly surprised.

Okey, dokey, good reading.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

A Feminine Point of View

I'm not sure what "romance" is. I know what I like, and I know what I like to read, but that's just me. I'll let Robert expound on the manly point of view. As for me, it all depends on my mood. Sometimes I like the sweet, old-fashioned notion of romance: a man opening doors for a lady, or perhaps placing himself in the outside position when going for a walk--to keep a lady safe from the dangers of veering cars, for example.

On the other hand, I also find it very romantic if the gentleman scrubs the toilets or does the dishes or gives the kids a bath, thus allowing the lady (that would be me, in this case) to put up her feet and relax a bit. Didn't you know we like that kind of thing, guys? Try it sometime and see what happens.

Having said all that, that doesn't mean I want to read about it. Yes, yes, it's occasionally nice to read about ordinary men and women and the ordinary (but somehow unusual, of course) circumstances under which they meet, but let's face it: I'm an ordinary person living an ordinary life, so why do I want to spend too much of my time reading about that? On the contrary, it's all about escapism for me. So, yes, I like to read about the woman who finds herself in a time portal, catapulted back to Scotland in 1475, where she stumbles upon a fierce, handsome (of course) clansman with good teeth (hey, it's called suspending one's disbelief). Or the frazzled modern woman who encounters a rakish medieval ghost during her trip to Scotland (what is it about Scotland and romance, anyway?) and somehow falls in love with this specter, even though he can't actually touch her. The more unbelievable, the better! Of course, it all depends on how realistic (if that's possible, I guess) the author can make it. Sherrilyn Kenyon has a way of making this supernatural stuff fun (okay, she sets her stories in New Orleans for the most part, but her alter ego, Kinley MacGregor, does the Scotland thing), as does Lynn Kurland, but it's been a while since I've read any of their stuff--I'm far too busy, dontcha know.

What do YOU like?