Denise Williams
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Thoughts & Happenings

Support our guest speakers!

4/12/2020

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Spring 2020 continues to show us the human capacity for care and resilience, and, it seems, there's no better time to think critically about our genre and the world around us than when we're in the middle of so much turmoil. If you've joined us for #2020RomClass, you've heard from our wonderful guest speakers. Consider supporting them by pre-ordering their upcoming books.
​I've loved co-facilitating Moving Past Bodice Ripping Toward Shredding The Patriarchy: Romance Novels and Tools for Justice. If you're interested in my debut novel, How To Fail At Flirting (available 12/1/20), click here.
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Guest Author: Rosie Danan on the Stigma of Female Desire

4/5/2020

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Moving Past Bodice Ripping Toward Shredding the Patriarchy: Romance Novels as Tools for Justice has a guest instructor this week! Rosie Danan, author of The Roommate (coming 9.15.20 from Berkley) is talking about the stigma of female desire.

PictureRosie Danan
I’ve spent a lot of time exploring the ways in which societal stigma against female sexuality intersects with both internal shame and external scorn in regards to reading and writing romance novels. 

Before I begin my analysis, I want to acknowledge that any type of sexuality that falls outside of the allo-cis-het-male gaze receives a degree of othering from mainstream media and society at large. In fact, too often, the breadth of the romance genre is minimized as books “by and for women,” when there are many writers and readers who fall outside of that binary definition. ​

All of that said, I think there is a specific case to be made about the ways in which American society in particular polices female desire, and the impact that misogyny has on people who perpetuate and internalize viewpoints  developed to uphold and further patriarchal power structures. 
I have experienced a spectrum of scorn and shaming of my romance reading, and later writing, across the span of my lifetime in a pattern that I believe many romance readers will recognize either in part or as a whole. 

When I was a teenager and started reading romance I was told it was inappropriate by my father and so I felt like I was doing something elicit by reading them. Thus, for over a decade, romance novels became something I felt I had to hide. This makes me so sad in hindsight, because in many ways I can’t think of a better time for romance reading than when you’re trying to understand relationship dynamics, desire, and agency.  

It wasn’t until the emergence of e-readers, a more covert platform for consumption, that I really leaned into my romance novel hobby, turning it from the occasional purchase to a weekly indulgence. 

When I was in my early twenties, the romance genre underwent the beginning of a rebranding: from bodice-rippers to feminist art. Female focused online communities such as Jezebel.com lead the charge in highlighting both the work and genre commentary of writers such as Sarah MacLean, Eloisa James, and Lisa Kleypas. The rebrand made it easier to reconcile my affection for romance novels with the rest of my burgeoning identity. 

At the time, I was using dating apps like Tinder and Hinge to meet men of the same age. During first or second date small talk, I often tossed out my passion for reading romance novels and the fact that I’d started writing one. I received indulgent smiles or awkward chuckles in return but later, the same men told me that romance novels didn’t count as “real books,” and I found myself reluctantly rounding out my bookshelves with Faulkner and James Joyce—books that sat untouched and glowering behind neat leather spines. 

Now, as I move into my thirties, I’m fortunate to have those days of dating jerks behind me. I’ve settled firmly into the romance community at large in on- and offline writing groups, but just this year I experienced harassment at work from both male and female coworkers when they found out I write and read “dirty books,” to the point that I have no returned to actively hiding my publishing success from my corporate peers.
Woman holding finger to lips. (Text) Shh!
In summary, I spent decades trying to unlearn the shame associated with my romance reading and writing—to recognize that the books I love are both important and inherently worth—only to find that reconciling my identity as a romance writer and a respected female business leader is very much still a work in progress. 

When the cycle of scorn associated with romance seems endless, I think of the stereotypical romance audience. The ones for which the derisive genre shorthand “mommy porn” was named. Are these women, arguably removed from eligibility having shifted from the age-old cultural archetype of “the maiden” to “the mother” the only ones able to claim their reading habits publicly and proudly? Is the perspective of giving birth required to unleash full “f*ck it” mode when it comes to owning our genre affiliation? 

My first instinct is to ask, how can we encourage younger romance readers to embrace their passion, on and off the page without fear of reproach? But like other patriarchal structures that blame the victim, I realize after further examination that with that technique, we’re starting in the wrong place. We should instead ask ourselves how we can speak to the shamers in our lives on an individual level and encourage them to address their own biases. 

How many men who consider themselves feminists would still balk at catching their thirteen year old daughter with a book whose cover featured the prominently displayed abdominal muscles of a burly, if often headless, man? How many women who run book clubs would never consider picking a monthly selection with a pink cover? Who exactly does burying art that values female pleasure serve? 

The answers become a bit more clear when you consider the sorry state of sex in America. A study from the American Sociological review uncovered that the rise of “hook-up culture” has introduced a new double-standard in relationships where “doubts about women’s entitlement to pleasure in casual liaisons keep women from asking to have their desires satisfied and keep men from seeing women as deserving of their attentiveness in hookups.” 

Women’s Health went on to name the phenomenon The Orgasm Gap. Some of their more startling findings: 
  • Men are 27 percent more likely to report having an orgasm than women during a sexual encounter
  • 67 percent of women have faked an orgasm with a partner, compared with just 28 percent of men
  • In a survey of college women, nearly 30 percent could not identify the proper location of the clitoris.
  • Only 11 percent of women experienced climax the first time with a new partner, although the percentage increased in long-term relationships.
Looking at the data, it’s easy to see who benefits from dismissing romance novels depictions of equal opportunity orgasms as cheap fantasy. Across the board, romance and all its subsequent manifestations in media—whether that's romance novels the way we traditionally think about them or if it's TV shows or movies or even women’s magazines—are branded as bad: trashy, a guilty pleasure. 

Personally, I have processed the dissonance of loving an art form and consistently being told it’s wrong through writing.

A key theme of my debut novel THE ROOMMATE is shame and specifically shame around female desire and sexuality. Writing this book was my own exercise in radi​calization. My journey of accepting my “unpalatable” passion, followed the journey of a main character, Clara, who is really ashamed of wanting more from sex than what she’s been getting from her previous partners trying to figure out if she’s brave enough to own her dissatisfaction. 
Cover Image for The Roommate
All Clara wants in life is to make her family as comfortable as possible. Then she meets this porn star, Josh, who shows her, through ownership of both his profession and sexuality, that she can and should claim agency over her desires. Ultimately, she transcends his advice and not only empowers herself but decides that together they should assist other people in reclaiming their sexual agency at scale. 

It was very powerful for me to be on this parallel path with my main character: doing something I was afraid of, knowing I almost certainly would encounter scorn from both people who know me and potentially strangers, knowing that the more successful the book becomes, the more people I’m exposing to my rebellion. 

Romance writers and readers at large, I think, go on a journey in which we say, in whatever way is right for us, that we like not only consuming books about—but also talking about—things like kissing or sex or romance without sex if that’s what you’re moved to portray/consume. In a very pure form, especially in our current climate, I think people want to feel good, they want to enjoy themselves and they’re becoming less afraid to say so without apology. 

For me, writing about porn as an industry and sex workers, is a metaphor for romance as a genre because both are stigmatized, obviously to different degrees, for portraying desire. 

It was really important to me to portray a marginalized group appropriately and honestly, but at the same time I think a lot of people who don’t fall into the mainstream, marketable allo-cis-het-white desire can see themselves in THE ROOMMATE.

At the end of the day, our society isn’t anti-sex. There’s a certain type of sexuality that’s very mainstream: from The Fast and The Furious movies to Ernest Hemingway. No one is saying it's wrong or shameful to consume that kind of media. No one tells Jonathan Franzen that his books aren't smart or serious because he depicts desire. Though they should tell him that for other reasons. (Don’t @ me Jonathan Franzen). Patriarchy dictates which types of sex we can put on cable and which kind we should hide under our pillows. 

I’m not ashamed of my book. I’m really proud of THE ROOMMATE and the way it handles desire and furthermore, I think that it’s sexy. It's meant to be sexy. But at the same time, I won’t pretend I’m not still afraid. 

Look at someone like Stacey Abrams, just the smartest, most amazing, powerful woman and there are still people, like Steven Colbert in this instance, who seek to humiliate her with her romance writing by taking a line out of context and turning it into a weapon. Seeing that treatment happen so publicly just furthers this idea that something like that can happen at any time, to any romance writer or reader, even to someone who is so well-respected. I've experienced small scale humiliation and frankly I've got less to lose, but yeah my heart broke for her and for everyone who loves romance novels at that moment. 

Novels by Stacey Abrams/Selena Montgomery

We’re fighting an uphill battle, but I believe that every time you read a romance, every time you recommend one to a friend, or proudly check one out from the library, every time you advocate for this genre or support it with your hard-earned money, you’re dismantling power structures that want you to believe that your pleasure doesn’t matter as much as a man’s and that’s pretty f*cking cool. ​​

Rosie Danan writes steamy, big-hearted books about the trials and triumphs of modern love. When not writing, she enjoys jogging slowly to fast music, petting other people’s dogs, and competing against herself in rounds of Chopped using the miscellaneous ingredients occupying her fridge. As an American expat living in London, Rosie regularly finds herself borrowing slang that doesn’t belong to her. Learn more about Rosie and The Roommate, available from Berkley September 15, 2020.
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I’d Like to Thank The Academy

1/20/2020

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Chris Evans helping Regina King to the stage at the 2019 Oscars

​This weekend, I finished writing acknowledgements which, I have to tell you, feels a lot like giving an Oscar acceptance speech, except that I was wearing sweatpants and Chris Evans was nowhere to be found when I tripped walking up my own stairs.

Still, it’s humbling to thank everyone who supported you during the conception, gestation, and birth of your book baby. Too graphic? Are you trying to decide what the placenta is in this metaphor? Let it go, it’s not that serious (but the life-sustaining placenta for this book would be Diet Coke and Baked Cheetos). There’s a challenge to make the acknowledgements fit the tone of the book—for me, that meant a little touching, a little funny, and a little bit deeper than you thought it would go.

There are a few people I didn’t get to thank, so if you’ll indulge me…
  • Thank you to the guy who hit on my friends and I at a bar while we were on vacation. I don’t know your name, but you inspired the hero in How to Fail at Flirting.
  • Thank you to the first beta reader who told me no one would read a book about a woman of color professor. Without your jackassery, I wouldn’t have rewritten what is now chapter 1 in a flurry of rage.
  • Thank you to our postal carrier who delivered Amazon box after Amazon box of things I could have easily gone to the store to buy. Momming + a demanding full-time job + writing is made just a little easier by having toilet paper and dog food delivered.
  • A big shout-out out to teachers at my son’s daycare. They deserve kudos for many, many reasons, but here I thank them for loving my child when I dropped him off, even when I was off work for the day so that I could write.
  • Thank you to the Twitterverse. I came to the party late, but Romancelandia on Twitter is a delightful, supportive, funny, and welcoming place to be.
  • Finally, thank you to caffeine. Without you I would sleep more and do less. This book came to be because of your constant presence in my life.

​That was a preview, so I hope you’ll make it to the end of HOW TO FAIL AT FLIRTING to read the final cut of the speech. It's not out yet, so I’ll just be here, waiting for Chris Evans to show up.

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The gif of a happily ever after: romance novels via gifs (Vol. 1)

12/8/2019

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Romance writers are proud of many things related to our craft: character development, humor, snappy dialogue, and steamy love scenes. There's something else, though. We're proud of our GIF game! Meet some of the 2020 debut romance novels coming your way as described by the authors in GIFs.
​The Authors:
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Allison Ashley
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Meryl Wilsner
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Janet Walden-West
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Katie Golding
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Suzanne Park
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Rosie Danan
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Denise Williams

Perfect Distraction (March 23, 2020)

Allison Ashley (Entangled)
Man in beanie. (Text) That's what everyone's saying. "You'll be okay." And "Oh, everything's fine." But it's not.
Couple eating ice cream taps spoons.
Two coffee mugs tipped toward each other. The mugs have faces and arms. They are holding hands. (Text) I love you a latte.
Couple kissing--woman seated on a desk and man between her legs.
Woman yellign at man who is passing out. (Text) Don't you die. Do you understand? I can't live without you. I pick you. I choose you. You don't get to die.
Two puzzle pieces fitting together. One reads "me" and the other reads "you"

Something To Talk About (May 26, 2020)

Meryl Wilsner (Berkley) *Pre-Order Available Now*
Paparazzi taking photos.
Person speaking into camera. (Text) Super Super Duper Gay.
Woman singing into microphone. (Text) I'm alright with a slow burn.
Speaking to camera. (Text) The only feelings between us are professional.
Person in bush, holding binoculars. (Text) Now kiss.
Woman looking our car window.

Salt + Stilettos (Spring 2020)

Janet Walden-West (City Owl Press)
The Rock hugging someone. (Text) Family.
Bald cartoon character on set with film decorations behind him. (Text) It stinks!
Woman turning to camera. (Text) This guy...
Spam musubi in packaging. Packaging is removed and food disappears as if being eaten.
Jason Momoa is pink pigtails and a lei tossing hair. (Text) I feel pretty.
Two dogs kiss as they eat the same piece of spaghetti in Lady and the Tramp.

Fearless (July 28, 2020)

Katie Golding (Sourcebooks Casablanca) *Pre-Order Available Now*
Woman walking in shorts. Man on motorcycle drives around her looking.
Couple dancing.
Two people riding horses.
Person racing motorcycle punches the air.
Bullrider rolling from bull as two people distract animal.
Sarah Jessica Parker speaking. (Text) If you love someone and you break up, where does the love go?

Loathe at First Sight (August 4, 2020)

Suzanne Park (Avon) *Pre-Order Available Now*
Woman holding up fingers to for a W and then an L on her head.
Man looking confused
Man speaking. (Text) I would date the hell out of me.
Person looking skeptically at camera. (Text) Troll-ing. verb. To antagonize others online with deliberately inframmatory irrelevant, or offensive and/or disruptive content.
Women in white robe holds out hands to the side. Her expression is angry.
Couple kissing.

The Roommate (September 15, 2020)

Rosie Danan (Berkley) *Add The Roommate To Your TBR*
Woman speaking. (Text) Ladies, we must take charge of our own sexual gratification.
Young girl washing dishes. (Text) You didn't think you were gonna be able to keep it a secret, did you?
Woman speaking into camera. (Text) Do not Google that phrase.
Man in scrubs and woman in bra talking. 
Man: Hey
Woman: Hey
Man: You what, Elliott, I think we should talk about the sexual tension.
Woman: (Turns) There is no sexual tension, ok?
Man: (doesn't stare at her breasts)
Women: Just go ahead and look before your neck snaps.
Man and woman give each other a high five, then both look at joined hands.

How to Fail At Flirting (December 2020)

Denise Williams (Berkley)
Teacher pushing supplies off desk. Yelling at students.
Man smiling at woman and throws but in the air to catch it. Women throws spaghetti in the air and it lands all over her face.
Man kisses woman on the hand. She looks over her shoulder at another man who crosses his arms playfully.
A couple kiss.
A woman speaking. (Text) Ohh Sh*t
Women looks up at man adoringly.
Get ready for a year of great books and be on the lookout for the next GIF post featuring more upcoming novels!
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    About Denise

    Denise reads romance novels, writes research papers, can be found humming "Baby Shark" long after her toddler has gone to bed, and loves ruining her character's lives but then giving them happily ever afters. She is a member of ​Romance Writers of America® and a 2019 Golden Heart® Finalist, and her debut novel HOW TO FAIL AT FLIRTING will be out fall 2020 from Berkley.

    Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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  • Home
  • About Denise
  • Books
    • How to Fail at Flirting
    • The Fastest Way to Fall
    • Do You Take This Man
    • Love and Other Flight Delays
    • Technically Yours
    • Even If the Sky Is Falling
    • Heat and CWs
    • International Editions
  • Contact Me
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