harlequin mills and boon

[lobelia321]

I have just spent all morning in a bathrobe (not very Flyladyish at all), reading the first two chapters of a Harlequin Mills & Boon sheikh romance (purchased at a market stall for 50 pence; I've not yet sunk to the depths of paying the full price for one of these BUT otoh, I feel that it would be good to pay the full price thus giving the author royalties because I believe in supporting all living authors) -- and excuse me, why did the LiveJournal spelling tyrant just put a red wiggly line under the word sheikh??? OK, testing: sheik sheikh. Aha. LJ thinks that this word should be spelled 'sheik'. *guffaws*

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes: romance novels!

I do not read romance novels. Up until last year, I did not read genre novels of any stripe. I read 3 Mills&Boons back in the 1970s, as a high school girl (they hadn't yet merged with Harlequin), and then I read another one in the early 1990s, loaned to me by a then-friend and business woman at Berkeley because it was set in California. All I remember about the 1970s one was that the heroine at one point wore a purple knitted top-and-skirt outfit. I was haunted!!

(I only started reading genre in 2002, and my genre was exclusively the genre of fanfic.)

But I am ever in the quest of expanding my repertoire. So, after having put myself through a programme of reading thrillers last year, I came across a how-to-write-romance article in the wonderful Mslexia magazine, and thought: let's get that one under my belt.

Revelation!

There's a commonplace saying: fanfic is Mills & Boon romance with men. I've read this said on LJ and in published academic literature, and I've said it myself. I was ignorant: I have no knowledge of Mills&Boon! I have no way of knowing whether or not fanfic is like Mills&Boon!

But Loreth Anne White's A Sultan's Ransom (Sept. 2007) totally is! Like some types of fanfic. Suspiciously like some types of bad!fic but also suspiciously (omg) like my very own Desert Prince.





Let me elaborate.

1) A Sultan's Ransom, part of Mills & Boon / Harlequin 'Intrigue' series

An extract:
Sheikh has kidnapped scientist Paige Sterling (yes, this is a woman's name). He ties her to the saddle of his camel. He rides behind her.
He reached around her, his arms and scent enveloping her as he picked up the reins. She could feel the hilt of his jambiya against her hip and the steady beat of his heart against her back. [...] An unwelcome frisson of sexual energy shot through her body from head to toe. Paige blinked.

This was absurd. The man was kidnapping her. How could she possibly feel turned on by his touch? It had to be a chemical reaction, pure and simple. Didn't mean she had to like it.

Now, how often have you read some slash and found the following tropes:
• his 'jambiya' presses against the other guy's hip (*snorts*)
• sexual attraction is 'unwelcome'
• someone or other 'blinks' in response to sexual attraction
• This was absurd. (Honestly: how often, between 50 and 200 times, have you read this exactsame sentence, and, indeed, written it yourself in slashfic? *g*)
• How could she he possibly feel turned on by his touch? This sentiment, too: integral to half of fanfic.
• It had to be a chemical reaction. I have written this, not in these exact words, but yes. I have read this. This totally liek happens all teh time in slash omg.

The experience of reading this romance genre is thus strangely and appallingly familiar. Maybe it's not that slash is like Mills & Boone with men, but that Mills & Boone is like fanfic heterosexualised???


2) My very own Desert Prince, dear to my heart and dear to my loins, and based on a dream I had when I was 16 years old (deceptively intimate, private and unique to me! me! me!) -- turns out to be the lust fantasy of millions.

Judging by the whole sheikh subgenre that exists! There are titles even with the very words 'desert prince' in them, and they're all Mills & Boon! There are whole threads on the Harlequin discussion blog board on sheikhs as the ultimate alpha male!

I refer yet again to the Monty Python words in Life of Brian: We are all individuals.

Not even my girlish teenage dreams were exempt from the interpellative powers of ideology and shared feminine lustivity, it seemeth. Huh.

So what this means, I guess, is: if I continue to write and post Desert Prince, wimmins out there may actually read it.

What this also may mean (shock, horror) is that I may be sucked into the vortex of sheikh romances. How embarrassing.





And you Germans out there will understand the connection to Kara ben Nemsi/Hadschi Halef Omar (their love was Meant To Be)...:






And on an academic level, I can just imagine the article: 'Fanfic, sheikh romance and Edward Said'. *winks outrageously at cathexis*

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

throw in Homi for good measure and you have yourself an article. *bg*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, Homi! But Homi's not about sheikhs! All I know about Homi is sly civility (which is a concept I really like, actually, *g*).

Lusting after sheikhs is politically so Wrong.

Perhaps I'll switch to lusting after Khalifs??

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Valentino! The Sheik (note spelling). Was that the original 'sheikh romance' do you think?

I first came across the concept in Margaret Mahy's The Catalogue of the Universe, one of my favourite books when I was a teenager:

***

"Still -- true love and all that..." Angela said vaguely. "Tycho and I are making a list of romantic ideas, mostly from books..."

"Is that why you were reading The Sheik last week?" Dido asked, sounding amused. "Where on earth did you find it?"

"I found it -- in a junk shop," Angela said enthusiastically. "We're never likely to get a chance to see the movie. It says, 'He had the handomest and cruellest face she had ever seen,' and 'she felt the boyish clothes were stripped from her limbs, and her beautiful white body was laid bare.'"

"Get away!" Dido exclaimed, and began sharpening her scythe again.

"And then she asked, 'Why have you brought me here?'" Angela recalled, "and he said, 'Bon dieu! Are you not woman enough to know?'"

"They don't write lines like that any more," Dido said. "Though probably they do, but somehow I don't get to read them."

"They make me laugh in a way," Angela said, "and yet..."

***

I did read a book by Barbara Cartland once - hilariously bad!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I want to see that movie! I ordered that movie for t'reference library under the pretext of needing to show the students an example of early silent Hollywood narrative... I need to know why thousands swooned when Rudolph died!

Also: Margaret Mahy!!! I love her teenage novels! I devoured them all when way past my teenagehood, wishing they'd written books like that when I was young.

My favourite was that one where a phantom family appear to this girl who leaves near the sea.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

The Tricksters? Yeah, that's a good one. I also like Memory, about a boy who accidentally befriends an old woman with Alzheimers, but my fave is The Changeover.

I've just remembered, I was watching this book programme on Sky the other day when I was doing my ironing... they had a couple of Mills & Boon authors as guests - one was an elderly gentleman! He said he picked up a book of his daughter's one day and thought he'd try his hand at it. He writes medical romances - his son and daughter are doctors so he rings them up for tips -- but they refuse to read his books because of the sexy bits. The other guests were Joanna Trollope and David Attenborough, it was all a bit odd.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

That's it: The Tricksters! It had a great cover, too. Also, Memory, I liked that a lot. Does it have a weird abandoned city street atmosphere? I'm trying to remember Changeover; I'm sure i've read it.

A gentleman writing naughty Mills&Boon! You know, there's kind of nothing that doesn't exist.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Does it have a weird abandoned city street atmosphere?

Yes!

The Changeover is about a girl and her little brother and there's a creepy old man in a shop, and she gets involved with a boy at school called Sorry, and he turns out to be a witch, and his mother and grandmother are also witches, and they live together in a witchy house and don't like each other much, and then she has to become a witch too, to save her little brother from the old man.

And that was the worst description of a book ever.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

No, it's a good description! I remember this book! It was scary!! The boy was a bit sexy but not as sexy as the trickster boy.

[miso-no-tsuki.livejournal.com]

Aaaarghhh! Okay,yes, I've done M&B. Just a couple of times. I can handle it.
But dear old Dame Barbara made my innocent 16-year old self snork helplessly when we got to the " and then they were one with the Divine ..." bit. Innocent yes, stupid, noooo!
And then I discovered slashfic.
And then I tried writing it.
Actually the "Black Lace" label is much more like rabid fanfic. Lots and lots of explicit hetero sex. *g* I once read a hilarious crackfic in which Bodie and Doyle (Professionals) are reading a *male* fanfic in which the busty heroine is being gang raped by a *women's* hockey team before being H/C'd by her equally busty twu wuv. At one point Doyle asks, uncomfortably "You don't suppose women write this stuff?"
To which Bodie replies "Nah ..."
*sniggers*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I tried reading some Black Lace. I couldn't get anywhere with it. It was too bad!ficcy and too mechanical, somehow. I clearly need the sheikhs.

And then they were one with the Divine.... oh, that is priceless. I did start a Kaká-as-monk fic year before last. Perhaps such a line could be worked in there somehow...??