Before we drop like 5 more bananas things, I want to address our light little dust-up last night:

For those who just saw the subtweets, someone decided to quote tweet one of our volunteers celebrating $300k with something that started with "As a lifelong romance hater..." & ended with "...cheap Harlequin trash"

It was a shitty tweet but x10 given the context.

The thing is: she was absolutely CONVINCED this was a compliment. She even tagged her friend who writes spec romance as an example of The Romance That Isn't Trash.

This happens to me constantly. Because people think it's a compliment.

It is NOT.

I write science fiction and I write romance. My books are both, they have always been both. And constantly, CONSTANTLY, non-romance readers who read & enjoy them think the biggest compliment they can give me is telling me I'm different/better than romance.

I'm not! I'm romance!

Part of the eternal struggle with how the romance genre is perceived is that people want to carve any books they enjoyed out as An Exception and therefore you never have to acknowledge the genre encompasses stuff you hate AND stuff you love.

It sucks, please stop it.

And this is my message to people who get "complimented" this way:

If you accept it as a compliment, you are throwing your genre siblings under a big ugly bus and you are being shitty. You have a choice: defend the genre or defend yourself.

Choose wisely or...well. Don't.

Also, if under 50 people have replied to your real shitty tweet, Romancelandia hasn't come for you.

You will know when Romancelandia comes for you. It will last for days and will leave a crater where your tweet was.