Carolyn Webb, of "The Age", profiles a number of Australian Romance writers in the lead-up to their annual conference, which runs from August 26 to 28, in Melbourne. The bonus this year is that the RWA has had their conference recognised as an umbrella event attached to the Melbourne Writers' Festival. A major coup I suspect.
As might be expected, the main thrust of the piece is that these writers don't get any form of respect in the literary world. This has also the experience of crime and science fiction writers in the past. Their public perception has changed gradually over the years but it seems that the romance field lags somewhat.
The romance genre is not one I visit very often and I think that, like all other artistic endeavours, Sturgeon's Law applies: "90% of everything is crap." The corollary of which is that 10% is pretty good to excellent. The difficulty with any genre lies in getting that 10% noticed.
