These have been hectic weeks since I last blogged. I’ve been the guest on other blogs and have generally spent hours and hours promoting THE RUNAWAY MCBRIDE. Some attention is not the kind of attention a writer wants, as, for the example, the following review.

When I opened my Sunday paper this morning, there it was, a review of my book. As far as I can tell, the reviewer hasn’t read my book but only skimmed it. Right off, she says that the book is set in Scotland. It’s not. Only the first chapter is set in Scotland. The rest of the book is set in London. She also implies that this is a bodice-ripper. Doesn’t she know that so called “bodice-rippers” disappeared from the genre almost twenty years ago? THE ENGLISH PATIENT by Michael Ondaatje is an exception. He resurrected some of the old clichés to great effect. But he wasn’t writing a romance. He was writing a love story.

According to this reviewer, romance writers should take Maeve Binchy and Kathleen Winsor as their models. I would agree that Maeve Binchy is a first rate writer, but she doesn’t write romances. She writes relationship books. As for Kathleen Winsor’s FOREVER AMBER (published in 1945!), her heroine is not a sympathetic character and the ending, for romance readers, is disappointing to say the least.

Something else the review got wrong: my heroine does not teach “ladyhood” (the reviewer’s word) at a girls’ school. She teaches classical Greek at a progressive school that is preparing its students to take the entrance exams for university. This is an important development in the history of women. The universities were becoming accessible to them, and so were the professions that had hitherto been occupied by men.

I could go on and on.

There are valid points the reviewer makes that are legitimate and well taken. What got me riled was her condescending attitude and her glib use of sarcasm. It says more about her than it does about my book.

Was it only yesterday that I told an unpublished writer that the first thing she had to develop if she wanted to succeed in this business was a thick skin?

My words have come back to bite me!