Love on the open page
Behind the clinch covers and happy endings,
real life is the setting for romance writers in Texas
--By Sherry Thomas

Had Pride and Prejudice been a Harlequin romance, Mr. Darcy would have looked like Fabio and heroine Elizabeth Bennet would have been writhing in her corset long before casting eyes on his Pemberley estate. Heck, had Jane Austen been a Texas romance writer, Pemberley might well have been a dude ranch. Or a lonesome family farmhouse in the tumbleweeds. Darcy would have been a cowboy and Elizabeth a can't-be-tamed rodeo trick rider.

Scholars of literature might shudder at a comparison between Austen and a
Judith McNaught, a Lisa Kleypas or a Francis Ray, but the notion has currency in at least one circle.

"We consider Jane Austen the first romance novelist," says Charis McEachern, a spokeswoman at the national headquarters of Romance
Writers of America, which was founded and is based in Houston.

"A romance novel, the way RWA looks at it, is a novel in which the main story is a love story between hero and heroine. The other thing that distinguishes it is that it has to have an emotional, happy ending."

And sex, right? Lots of steamy sex. Oh, yes, and intrigue. And seduction. And euphemisms for body parts. And Fabio. Got to have Fabio on the cover.

And all this from the fevered imaginations of lusty vixens dictating yarns of love from their pink satin boudoirs. Typing fast and hard in silk negligees and silver heels, Dom Perignon in one hand and The Joy of Sex in the other?

Maybe in some readers' wildest fantasies. But the truth is much more prosaic: Thousands of creative, intelligent American women -- many of whom don't even own lingerie -- make their living writing and selling romance novels. And none are as successful as the ones living in Texas.

Living perhaps next door to you. In suburban houses, with lawns that need mowing and dishes that need scraping. Bathing not in champagne but in tubs that clog and never come quite clean.

Why Texas? Where else but Texas can you find a "knight in shining Stetson"?

Texas has such cachet in foreign eyes," says Christina Dodd, 46, a USA Today-listed best-selling romance novelist from Sugar Land who, when not writing, admits to doing very mundane things indeed (such as picking her cat, Luke Skywalker's, hairballs from her beige-carpeted home in First Colony).

"Even writers who don't live here set their books here (in Texas)," says Francis Ray, a Dallas romance writer and one of the first to write for BET Books' Arabesque imprint, aimed at African-American readers. "You want to say, `Stay out of our state -- write about your own state.' "

Tell it to the publishers. They know Texas sells.

"It's that cowboy mystique," says Ray, who likes to incorporate black history -- particularly black cowboy history -- into her books. "It's the hat, it's the boots, it's the tight-fitting jeans. It's the whole thing. Whatever it takes, they can do it.

"They're gruff on the outside, a marshmallow on the inside," she continues with a laugh. "It just takes a certain woman to bring it out."

It's magical, in a way. The cowboy's kiss, a giant golden sky. Not only does it seduce readers, but it also seems to captivate writers as well. Maybe that's why so many prominent romance novelists call Texas home.

Some, like Peggy Moreland (whose recent book Hard Lovin' Man is part of Silhouette's "Texas Brides" series), were born here.

"I wrote four or five books before I wrote about the cowboy," says Moreland, a self-described East Texas "country gal" and amateur rodeo barrel racer who now makes her home in Round Rock. "I didn't think people would want to read about Texas. I thought you needed to write glitz or glamour."

Others, such as the naturally glitzy, inherently glamourous Judith McNaught, originally from California and then St. Louis, are enchanted expatriates. "I chose Texas after my husband (Michael McNaught) died," says McNaught, a veteran of the New York Times best-seller list and one of the most beloved romance writers in America.

"I really loved the people. I loved their smiles," says the fiftysomething McNaught, explaining how she passed through Dallas on tour with her first book, Whitney My Love, in 1984 and decided to move her family there. These days she lives in a white mansion on Houston's Clear Lake.

Then there's Lisa Kleypas, a former Miss Massachusetts who -- even though she was born in Temple and lived there only 11 months -- seemed to find her way back home from New England, where she earned a political science degree from Wellesley College.

"I moved back to Dallas," she says, telling how she met her husband, Greg Ellis, a "tall, blond Texan by birth" that no one would "mistake for otherwise." "It was completely whirlwind. We were both 30 when we met. Nine months later we were married."

Kleypas, who published her first romance novel at age 21 and has spent several stints on the New York Times best-seller list, now pens her Regency-era historicals from New Braunfels -- where the river wild and the green fields could very well be mistaken for the English countryside.

"I do use everything that I experience out here on the farm. It all comes out in the books," Moreland says on the way from Round Rock to Windsong Farms, where she keeps her horse, Lo-Jump. "I don't think you can write about things you don't know about."

Rita Clay Estrada, a multipublished Houston romance writer and one of the founders of RWA, says it may be "that Texas spirit of independence" that draws writers in. "What is bigger than life here we still do."

She should know. She is a Rita -- after whom the Romance Writers of America Rita Award was named. The RWA story, aka "the two Ritas," began in 1978 with Estrada and her spunky mother, Rita Gallagher, trying to break into the British-dominated romance writing genre.

With Harlequin based in Canada and little interest from New York-based publishers, the romance industry was all but closed to American writers. "Romance, as far as they were concerned, was a British concern," says Gallagher, a beautiful seventysomething, holding court one recent weekday at a cafe near RWA's northwest Houston offices. "We were told American women can't write romance."

But these Texas women -- self-described "women's libbers" in those days -- weren't about to take no for an answer. "We decided to put on a conference of our own." It took three years and countless dollars of their own money before the first RWA conference became a reality in February 1981.

After years of being ignored by editors and agents, RWA finally lined up 45 of them -- the elite of the industry -- to attend. The national media swarmed. "Eight hundred people came," says Estrada. "We were expecting 150."

Today the RWA writers conference is one of the best-attended gathering of writers in the country. The nonprofit organization -- which sponsors conferences, contests and networking opportunities for published and unpublished writers -- has grown from 600 charter members to more than 8,200 nationwide.

They're a varied lot but for the most part have little in common with the lusty wenches on the "clinch" covers of their books.

"People think we're like our heroines," says Dodd. "They think we all have long hair and drink champagne out of shoes." "Most of us," she adds, "most people, in fact, really lead quite dull lives."

Back in the sleepy, suburban Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Ray, 52, says her day-to-day life is hardly romantic. She gets up, puts on her nurse's uniform and drives to the three Dallas-area elementary schools where she tends to kids when they're sick. Her 29-year-old daughter still lives at home and needs mothering once in a while. And her husband, who recently retired, is demanding, as husbands tend to be.

"I still work my job," Ray says. "The only thing is, the extra income allows me to do a little bit more. I invest a little bit now in stock. It allows you a little leeway financially, and that helps."

But rich? Dripping in diamonds? No way.

"You meet people out (in public) who say, `Ooh, you're the writer,' almost like a little star status," Ray laughs. "But you're still going to your day job every day and cleaning out the commode, and you know you don't have star status."

When she flew to Los Angeles last year to watch the BET filming of her novel-turned-TV-movie Incognito, her students were sure they'd never see her again. "When I came back from L.A., they said, `Nurse, why are you still here?' " she says. "I want to eat, is my response. They think I should be rolling in the dough, and a limousine picking me up or whatever."

Moreland likens it to a Cinderella life. "You get to go out and be a star," she says, "even if you do have to go home again and wash your son's soccer socks."

Even Kleypas, who was earning six figures a year as a romance writer before she married and became a moth

er, spends most of her spare time these days making peanut butter sandwiches and reading Thomas the Tank Engine to her young son, Griffin. McNaught comes closest to the fantasy, with her jet-setting social life, personal assistant and opulent home.

However, it is a combination of business savvy and family holdings that pay for her castle on the water and the gilded work station where she spins her best sellers. "This," she says, gazing around her grand dining table, where the panorama stretches beyond the patio and pool to the Kemah-Seabrook bridge, "did not come from writing."

For writers like Ray and Moreland, it's easy to see the influence of the state's rich history and romantic landscape. Many of Moreland's books -- including her McCloud series -- are set on dusty, rough-and-tumble ranches. Ray's chronicles of the Taggart family possess much of the same Texas grit.

But for the Regency princesses, Dodd and Kleypas, the Texas touch is more subtle. It drifts in and out of their stories like a prairie breeze. Sitting at her parents' bed-and-breakfast in Gruene, the four-months-pregnant Kleypas tells how losing all her belongings in the floodwaters of Tropical Storm Francis influenced her upcoming novel, Where Dreams Begin, due on bookstore shelves in July.

"It's about a widow having a hard time losing the memory of her first husband," Kleypas says. "The theme is, `Where do you go from here?' In the flood, I lost my possessions, my life -- my poor 14-year-old cat. Death, like a flood or any other tragedy, is just a complete change. You can't ease into it."

Even McNaught, who has married and divorced since the "love of her life" died, finds more inspiration in life than in locale.

"I write about women I would like to be," she says thoughtfully. Then again, McNaught -- who, like her characters, has adorned parties everywhere from River Oaks to St. Tropez -- could be anyone she wanted.

If you're not a romance reader, meaning you haven't followed the Taggart family's struggles or the adventures of the McClouds across Texas, haven't felt your toes curling at the virginal love scene in Dodd's That Scandalous Evening, then you might dismiss all romance writers as hacks and nymphomaniacs.

You wouldn't be alone.

There are some days when it seems that no one takes them seriously. Open a New York Times Book Review on any given Sunday and you'll see names like Nora Roberts, McNaught and Kleypas on the best-seller list. But look for a review, a mention of any of their new books, and you will find they are nearly invisible in the eyes of the erudite.

"The New York Times Review? They would never touch romance," McEachern says. "The two biggest misconceptions about romance novels is that they're poorly written and full of sex." Moreland has actually had bookstore patrons come up to her at a signing, turn up their noses and say, "I don't read that trash."

"This is one of those areas where you don't automatically get a lot of respect. If I wrote Western or sci-fi, I'd probably get more respect than I do writing romance," says Kleypas, who has been fighting stereotypes since her days as an openly aspiring romance writer at Wellesley. "It's a genre for women written by women, and there's an automatic trend to downplay it next to genres men enjoy more."

Even she still gets comments from radio DJ's, such as: "When are you going to start writing real books?"

"I'm still aware that they think I'm inferior," Kleypas says. "But I respect what I do. I have very good self-esteem that has been hard-won. "There are times when I think maybe I'll stop writing romance novels and move on to something more `important' and more `literary.' But now that I've matured as a woman, I've truthfully come to believe that the romance novels I write are just as important as the literary novels. When done right, they can be just uplifting and beautiful."

Dodd is a little more practical: "I'm perfectly willing to compare income and IQ with anyone," she says pertly.

Whatever its reputation, romance writing has been and continues to be a red-hot industry. According to an independent survey commissioned by RWA (participants included the American Bookseller Association, the Book Industry Study Group and Ingrams catalog), 53 percent of all mass-market fiction purchased in 1997 was romance. The genre also accounted for 19.4 percent of all books purchased that year -- and 38 percent of all fiction.

The study also showed that romance fiction sales were up -- a slight 1 percent in 1997 -- while sales in all other genres showed a decline. Romance generates approximately $1 billion in sales annually, the survey showed, with a readership that spans all age groups from 14 (you can bet there are some younger, reading under the covers) to saucy octogenarians. Predictably, the study found, an estimated 91 percent of the 41.4 million people who read romance novels in the United States are women.

But more and more men are getting turned on to the genre, both as readers and writers. "There are men out there who read romance novels; they just don't want to admit it," Moreland says. "I've had bookstore owners who tell me they'll have men come in and pick up a romance novel, sit down and read it and put it back on the shelf."

It's hard to blame a reader -- man or woman -- for not wanting colleagues to see something like A Rogue's Embrace peeking from their briefcase. But part of that is a cover issue. "That's a big, big debate in the romance industry," McEachern says. "Do people really like the clinch cover?"

Some writers swear by the "clinch," industry-speak for those steamy, almost cartoonlike covers featuring a Fabio-lookalike hero lustily entwined with a sinewy, half-naked heroine. Others, as McEachern puts it, long for book covers "that you're not embarrassed to carry on an airplane."

"When you start out, you need to have a clinch on the cover," Dodd says matter-of-factly, adding: "Honey, if you sell the book, you take what they give you."

What most readers don't know is that authors often have little control over the way their books are packaged. Cover style is just part of the issue. Dodd, a self-described "cover problem child," has experienced the gamut of cover calamities -- from the time an artist inadvertently drew her heroine with three arms (and it was used anyway) to blatant misspellings of her name.

"The best thing you can say to an art director is, `It's lovely. I love it. I'm sure it will sell a lot of books'," says Dodd, smiling through clenched teeth. Titles are also subject to editors' whims and, like cover art, are part of the marketing package. McEachern says when it comes to category romance, published in series by the likes of Silhouette and Harlequin, three things sell: babies, cowboys and brides.

"There's kind of a running joke: If you write a book and you've got a baby, a bride and a ranch, you can almost bet you'll sell it to Harlequin," she says. Moreland says she was pleased when she thought of the title Boot Scootin' Baby for one of her recent Silhouette novels. But there was a mix-up, and she lost it to another novel coming down the production line, so the book was called Rugrats and Rawhide. "Rugrats and Rawhide -- that sold the book," she says. "But I don't know. Boot Scootin' Baby would have done it, too."

McEachern says the newest category trend is ethnic romance, such as Arabesque's line of books for African-Americans or Encanto's books aimed at Hispanic readers. Ray says the new imprints, specifically Arabesque and Encanto, have given more exposure to writers of color.

However, being pegged to a "niche" market limits a writer's audience. "Love is love," says Ray, who has also been published by the mainstream St. Martin's Press. "Skin color doesn't mean you don't know how to love. You come from a different background, but we all have commonalities. We all want our children to be successful. So why can't people see there's a market for that?"

Part of RWA's mission is to debunk the stereotypes. Last year's national advertising initiative, "Look Who's Reading Romance," was a poster campaign that showed everyone from construction workers to judges reading romance novels. "There's just a huge misconception in the public about what romance fiction is and isn't," McEachern says. "If you like romantic films, if you liked Notting Hill, While You Were Sleeping or You've Got Mail, you'll like romantic fiction."

McNaught, who has the education and means to do anything she wants, says she is proud of her profession. "I write for women," she says. "We are the shoulders the world runs on, and we always have been. The sisterhood is alive and thriving, and that's my pet project, to keep that going."

Kleypas adds another perspective: "I don't feel that romance writers should take themselves too seriously. I've read interviews with writers from all genres where they say things like, `I see my scenes played out on this blank wall ... ' " There go the eyes rolling. "It's a job," she says. "When you have to put something on a page and it's not coming, that's when it's work."