Reasonably Priced Love!

[erastes]

Hope you all have your lilac on your desks. I do. Smells gorgeous.  Were you There?

I'm a little shocked by a wanky thread over at the Historical Novelists Society yahoo group over the last few days where there is a great deal of slagging off of historical romance writers. Some people are calling for 1. calm 2. non-lumping of all writers into one group and 3. the argument to be taken off list, but still, I'm actually a little stunned. Writers that I thought I considered peers, make it sound as if they think they are better than me because they write about the time and not the relationship. It's the generalisations that drive me insane. "Most historical romances should be labelled historical romance fantasy."

Yeah, and most historical writers should be [refrains]...

So we came last in Eurovision again. Hurrah!  Well deserved. Our song was awful. It might be a nice dance track but it's not a Euro-song and that's where I think they are going wrong. It's anthems like Shine a Light that will do well.  Our Tel is complaining that it's no longer a song contest, but frankly, when was it ever that?  And if the votes are really coming from the populace of the country, are we really saying that everyone who phones in is voting politically? Would you vote for Ireland just because they were nearest, or refuse to vote for Finland because they did something (as a country) that you didn't agree with?  Are billions of Europeans really refusing to like our music just because of Tony Blair, or because our songs are crappy?  I know which one I'd plump for.  Being English I'm not allowed to vote for Britain, (yes, I'm English, not British, thank you) but bloody hell, there's no way I would have voted for us.  Personally I wish we didn't get a bye straight into the final, because I'd be interested to see if we ever even got there. Did Ireland get voted out because of political reasons? NO. They got voted out because they had a fucking turkey puppet singing it. (although I do love Dustin. I would have voted for him.)

Comments

[suryaofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, wank seems to be everywhere at the moment. I think the only way to avoid it might be to stay off the internet. But then there's plenty of wank in real life too, right?

I heard an interesting theory on Eurovision voting on Radio 4 the other day (Friday, I think). It went like this:

Since you can't vote for your own country, what you have to look at is where each country gets most of its immigrants from. Most immigrants will vote for their 'home' country - they can do this because the voting system looks at residency, not citizenship. So Irish immigrants (or their descendents) in Britain will tend to vote for the Irish song, and the countries in eastern Europe which have a lot of Russian immigrants will tend to vote for the Russian song. It works for Germany too - there are a lot of Trukish immigrants in Germany, and historically Germany has voted for the Turkish song.

I didn't watch it this year, so I've no idea if this theory holds up in practice, but I thought it was interesting.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes - and what would I do if I couldn't procrastinate? Heaven forbid! I might have to ...WRITE!!!!!

And that's a very interesting theory. I like it. But it's so stupid of people just to vote for their homeland!

I voted for Yordi a few years back and I'm certain I'm not from Finland or wherever they hailed from.

How do the little angels rise up?

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

A very special day, indeed.

I've been watching a few of the Eurovision songs on Youtube and now I shall have to find the British one!

Re: How do the little angels rise up?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

don't!!! It's horrible!!
:)

[katjak.livejournal.com]

I've also heard from people who know expats that they tend to vote for their homeland entry, even if they don't like the song much. There's a large Russian minority in Finland and Baltic countries, and we tend to give high points to Russia in ESC. Russians are on the average not very highly considered here, so the only logical explanation seems to be the expat community. I checked and there were only a couple of times we haven't given points to Russia, and the other time of those we gave 10 or 12 points to Ukraine...

But other than that, I don't think that the voting is necessarily all political even when it seems so from the point charts. People of similar nationalities and cultures just tend to like similar music.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I agree, I don't think it's political. There aren't that many people who are that interested!! As you say, it's liking the same type of music.

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

My vote (not that I did tho) was for Ukraine. Those dancers were hot. Shallow, huh?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh yes indeedy!

:)

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I've got a lilac outside the window and it's almost ready to bloom.

The Historical folks too, eh? Have you noticed lately that there's some kind of surge in categorizing? Over on the gay marriage lj someone posted about two supposed camps of glbt--assimilitionists and radical separatists, (I'm in the "take your categories and stuff 'em" category on that one), the HEA vs Surprise Me categories... bleah.

btw, when I looked at Amazon US, Standish was #3, so obviously the controversy has had some good effect.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

"Reasonably priced love and a hard boiled detective" would be a great tag line for a m/m blurb, wouldn't it? And a hard boiled detective would surely go for sausage-inna-bun (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). There's actually a booth at a local farmer's market here that sells Sausage In A Bun. I can't walk past without looking for CMOTD.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

My lilac is just getting to the end, but it's so heavy with bloom it could almost break. The smell is gorgeous if I sit here with the window open.

People like boxes I guess. I understand that to a certain degree. I don't really want to find out the book I'm reading is a sword and sorcery thing after I've started to read it, but I think sometimes it all goes a bit far, specially around the fringes. So much time discussing what romantic erotica is for example.

Yes! I noticed that, it went up on both US and UK. Perhaps healthy discussion is a better promo tool than I realised. Too much like hard work though.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I know that Josh Lanyon has done a gay detective but I've wanted to do one for a while, in the same vein as Sam Spade but noticing the guys, "He walked into my office like he was carrying an axe into battle and from the look of his shoulders it wouldn't have been an effort." sort of thing.

How wonderful! As Dibbler has a variant in every culture, it's probably him!!