Tag: romance

Being Proud of Being Different

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

I’m just back from #WorldCon76, which was a whirlwind of great stuff. I caught a moment of downtime at the lovely Fairmont pool, including a much-needed nap.

This week at the SFF Seven, we’re asking “What are you most proud about with regards to your writing?” Come on over to read about mine. 

Why I Hate Han & Leia’s Backstory

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

A woman's torso, naked but for a wrap of crimson velvetToday is the release day of THE DEVIL’S DOORBELL! Very cool to see the excitement out there about it. Also, working with this group of amazing, high-caliber and professional authors has been one of the highlights of my career so far. You ladies rock!

So, I’ve been stewing on this post since I saw Star Wars: the Force Awakens. OBVIOUSLY this post will contain spoilers. You all have had six months to see the movie, so I figure any spoilerage is on you at this point *and* you’ve been warned. It does affect your experience of the movie. After all, my own mother spoiled it for me as I talked to her on the drive down to Albuquerque to see the movie with a friend – after I’d avoided spoilers for WEEKS! 

Alas.

(Also, I seem to have gotten quite worked up writing this post, so the F-bombs are flying. Be warned.)

Anyway, The Force Awakens (TFA) opens many years after The Return of the Jedi finishes. Luke has disappeared to parts unknown, Han and Leia consummated their love affair long enough to birth and raise (for an unspecified period of time) their son, Kylo Ren. He’s an emo dude who ran off at some point to take up Darth Vader’s megalomaniacal legacy. Because of some vague disagreement over their bad boy son, Han and Leia broke up and have lived apart for *years*. She’s been key in the ongoing rebellion leadership (which is super-cool; more of this, please; yes yes yes) and Han went off to … I dunno. Scavenge around the galaxy with Chewie? That part wasn’t terribly clear to me.)

I should caveat here that I am decidedly NOT a follower of the Star Wars overall canon. I’ve never read any of the books written around the franchise, or anything else. I’ve seen all the movies, but that’s it. I’m aware that people write about and discuss all kinds of story threads not in the movies, but I don’t know anything about them. 

ANYWAY… this seriously stuck in my craw. Yes, it’s a great moment when the movie’s central heroine and hero run into Han and Chewie, and it’s a lovely moment of reunion when Han and Leia see each other again, but is it worth this backstory of their long separation?

No.

No no no.

And you know why this annoys me so greatly?

Two reasons: because it’s facile storytelling and because it transmits SFF’s contempt for romance.

Allow me to unpack a little. 

Why have Han and Leia be long-separated at the beginning of the movie? To add conflict. I can’t think of another reason. (Enlighten me if you have one.) To me this reads as screenwriting shorthand: separate the lovers so that you can have the tension of their old differences and the simmer of sexual tension renewed. Because Hollywood thinks you can’t have an established love affair AND sexual tension. 

Also I think Hollywood believes that long-term relationships can’t last happily, which is part of their contempt for romance. In most movies with romance, the focus is entirely on the establishment of the early relationship – as with Han and Leia in Episodes IV-VI – and rarely on a long-term relationship. When a movie IS about later in the relationship, it’s nearly always about trouble. Conflict, doncha know. 

So, I suspect the screenwriters didn’t give much thought to the possibility of having Han and Leia having been together all those intervening years. They just tossed out that, oh no! They separated acrimoniously because their son was a shit head. Because this does in so many marriages, right? 

That annoyed me, too. Han and Leia are both strong-minded people who’ve endured great losses in their lives and emerged scarred but victorious. And we’re to believe they could not preserve their great passion for each other, that their love and loyalty that survived the worst pressures simply crumbled because they couldn’t agree on their grown son doing stupid, disappointing things?

Talk about undercutting two truly great characters. Which brings me around to the contempt for romance.

I could be wrong, but I doubt it occurred to anyone working on the movie how this change in trajectory affects our long-held feelings for Han and Leia. All these many years since Return of the Jedi, I’ve had them in my heart living Happily Ever After. Sure, fighting the Empire and various scourges of civilization, but TOGETHER. Side by side. Heroic partners in life. Enjoying at least that much joy, which is the WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF TRIUMPHING OVER AN EVIL EMPIRE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

*deep breath*

Did I mention this annoyed me?

Basically this movie told us that there is no happiness. Even Han and Leia don’t get to have it.

Worst of all, Han dies, so they’ll never be together again. Even though they reconcile (and it IS a lovely scene), there’s not even a kiss. He dies. Leia soldiers bravely on, alone. (She’s an older woman now, so she wouldn’t be interested in having sex again anyway.)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m thrilled to pieces that it looks like Carrie Fisher will be back to play Leia in perhaps an even greater role as a general in the rebellion in the next movies. (Which I wonder if the movie folks had planned on before they saw the *overwhelming* “Fuck-Yeah, General Leia” response.) However, I Am Not Pleased that she seems to be relegated to crone status. 

But, hey, it’s SFF action/adventure and who cares about mushy stuff beyond the occasional dirty-hands, smexy kiss?

Oh yeah. We do. 

And you know what? We can have both. Let’s get out there and write those damn stories. 

Feminism and Romance Novels

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

CPoaBK0UYAQHKF8I got this photo the other day, on the autumn equinox. Maybe it’s the Celtic ancestry, but I love to commemorate the solstices and equinoxes. Part of marking the journey of the year.

Last spring, at the RT Convention, I gave a workshop on Walking the Line of Consent. (I also teach it online or can visit to give it – description here.) This is a topic I’ve been interested in for a long time, one that I’ve written and talked about a fair amount. And one I’ve gotten grief for. In fact, when I proposed this workshop, a couple of author friends warned me against doing it. They said I might get myself in trouble.

And the RT book reviews website asked me to write a short article about my thoughts on the topic, which generated good conversations. Another author, however, started a bit of a witch hunt among her followers against me, making me out to be a terrible person for championing anything less that full consent.

Which I do, in real life. I maintain that fiction is something else, a place where all fantasies are acceptable.

At any rate, the workshop went off amazingly well. A gratifying number of people attended and they all stayed for the whole thing! After the fact, one of the gals who attended, , contacted me and said she was writing an article on the topic for Aeon Magazine, and asked if she could quote me since I said such smart things about it.

How could I say no to that?

So today the article came out and it’s so good. She articulates a lot of the same ideas I’ve had about romance novels for most of my life. In an era where the media loves to sling about terms like “bodice ripper” and “mommy porn,” just to up the click rate, it’s terrific to read something both smart and romance-positive.

I’m flattered to be included!

Talking to a Bunch of Romance Writers

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

George RR Martin and Kim HarrisonA week ago I got to go to George RR Martin’s theater here in Santa Fe, the Jean Cocteau Cinema. He’s doing really interesting things with it, having bought the old theater near the rail yard, rehabbing it and now, along with art house movies and screenings of Game of Thrones episodes, bringing in authors for signings and discussions. This was my first time to go, when Kim Harrison visited and George did a Q&A session.

VERY fun.

And so interesting. I had the best time.

As you can see from the picture, the venue is an intimate one and listening to these two superstar writers discuss the business totally rocked my world. George is a terrific interviewer and I got insights into his career as well. All in all, a terrific evening and I greatly appreciate what he’s doing for both our community and for writers everywhere.

That said…

Yeah, you knew there was a “but” coming, right?

A funny thing happened that’s been bugging me ever since.

After about an hour of Q&A, Kim went out to the lobby to sign books. Because it’s a very small, cramped space (like most of the older parts of Santa Fe), George asked us all to stay seated so she could settle and then he excused us by rows to go out there gradually. My friend and I were a number of rows back, so we sat a fair amount longer and essentially chatted with George. Which was so fun. People asked him questions and he asked us who else we’d like to see visit. That was like getting to ask Santa Claus for a pony – and believing he’d deliver.

One gal mentioned Stephen R. Donaldson and asked if he’s still writing and living in Albuquerque. George frowned and said he had no idea. Now, if you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, you probably know I recently met Steve at Bubonicon and, in my capacity as VP of Programs, subsequently invited him to speak to my local RWA chapter, LERA. My friend, also a LERA member, elbowed me, so I spoke up and said yes! Steve is writing a new book in a new series, that he’d visited our chapter in Albuquerque and read to us from it and it’s wonderful. (It really is.) It was a great program and everyone really enjoyed hearing about his process and career. I probably forgot to say anything about it here.

George looked confused and asked where this was again? I said, you know, Romance Writers of America? Kim had referenced it earlier, though saying she was no longer a member as she doesn’t write romance. And he said, yes, he knew about RWA, that he was just having a hard time picturing Steve Donaldson talking to a bunch of romance writers.

Yeah.

I mean, here I’m having a conversation with one fantasy-writer legend about another, in front of an audience, so I was a little flustered. I explained that I met Steve at Bubonicon, which had also been referenced, and how I’m VP of Programs for LERA and how I write crossover between fantasy and romance and so do many of our members and blah blah blah. It was only later that it hit me what he’d really said. That it occurred to me to wonder exactly what he had been picturing. What does “a bunch of romance writers” look like? Somehow I get this image of a group of women dressed in chintz, sipping tea and giggling. With the, supremely frustrating leisure of hindsight, I wish I’d said something like “Why? We write books, too.”

Don’t we?

I know what we’re talking about here and I don’t really mean to slam George Martin for this, because I think he simply and genuinely revealed a very common misperception. We all know that Romance is the least respected genre out there. Written largely by women, for women, there’s an idea that romance writers are somehow…not really writers. After all, it’s just formula, right? We plug in different hair and eye colors, maybe a new setting and a different order of sexual positions and BOOM – on to the next book! We don’t actually delve into the craft or anything.

 So, over the last week, the more I thought about it (read: brooded a teensy bit), the more it annoyed me. Why on earth WOULDN’T we have a major league writer come talk to us, regardless of genre?? Writing is writing. A writer’s career follows the same general landscape regardless of the actual stories we write.

*deep cleansing breath*

Maybe that’s not what he meant. Maybe he wondered what on earth we’d get out of hearing Steve talk. The answer is that we got tons out of it. For days after, we traded notes on what we most got out of Steve’s talk. Steve himself emailed me after and said how much he enjoyed our group and how he’d love to come back anytime. In fairness, he may have been pleasantly surprised to find such a savvy, smart, creative and amazing bunch of writers who really appreciated what he had to say.

I think, in the end, this is just part of the ongoing effort to bring romance out from under the bed, hidden by lacy dust-ruffles and tucked in next to the sex toys. Maybe by having these conversations, by inviting writers from other genres to speak to us, we’re doing the work of demonstrating that we are writers, like any others. We’re invested in our craft and our careers. We work hard to learn, grow and improve.

Maybe I’ll invite George to come speak to us next.