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This post isn't about my 50th birthday - which will occur next Saturday, 8/18.  (Yes, I'm an 8 kind of gal!)  It's about the other one - the one people actually care about - Fifty Shades of Grey.

Linda E. Savage of Huffpo posted a piece entitled "Why We Love Fifty Shades" that goes deeper  than Christian and Ana in the red room.  The piece delves behind the sex and grubbing and analyzes the real reasons women love the books.  IMHO, Ms. Savage's piece is dead on.  If you've read my analysis of the trilogy then you know that my position has always been that women may have read the trilogy for the hot sex, but they fell in love with it because of the love story.

Ms. Savage's 5 reasons we love Fifty:

#1 His intense focus of attention to Ana and his ability to understand her non-verbal cues, using sexy words of affirmation and encouragement.

#2 His ability to build the sexual tension, staying behind her arousal curve by teasing her expectations rather than simply constant groping or rubbing.

#3 The scenes are edgy.

#4 Christian is very creative in his options for sex play, an aspect which may seem impossible for the men reading this blog to duplicate.

#5 Ana and Christian develop the quality of emotional transparency which deepens their intimacy as the story unfolds.

Read the story for the author's explanation of each reason. I'm particularly drawn by Ms. Savage's conclusion and advice to men everywhere:

The characters in the trilogy never stop growing and the moments of anguish and conflict are essential parts of the process. This is no simple boy meets girl/fall in love and live happily-ever-after story. It is raw and gritty and very romantic. And here's the message to the men out there:romantic is not only flowers and cards. It is intense sexual interest and taking time to build the fire. It is edgy, it is creative sexy talk and action and it is emotional risk-taking. Wow, now that is HOT.

Kudos to Ms. Savage.  I think her analysis of why so many of us have been feeling fifty lately is right on target.  To borrow her metaphor, the Fiftymania proves that a well-stoked fire can burn hot enough to change the world.  I find the analysis out there in the blogosphere (generally by folks who didn't read the whole series) pigeonholing the trilogy as "Mommy porn" especially offensive for the very reason that the books are not about sex.  The spark and sizzle of Fifty Shades comes from being right in the center of circle when the fire starts, and having it kindle around you until it's destroyed preconceptions and labels and plunged you into a world built of mania and moonlight.

Come to think of it, if Feeling Fifty is that exciting - then bring it on!  I might not mind my birthday so much after all.  Maybe I'll celebrate Feeling Fifty by re-reading Fifty 😀

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Someone in my Twitter feed (follow @quackingalone) passed along a link to a UK Telegraph article entitled "If Maeve Binchy had been a mother." Ms Binchy, a renowned author, passed away on July 30th in her beloved Dublin, Ireland at the age of 72.  She gave birth to 16 books, including her first  and best known, "Light A Penny Candle," and 2 others ("Circle of Friends" and "Tara Road") that were made into movies.  She neither birthed nor adopted children and she died childless.

The author of the Telegraph article, Amanda Craig, ponders how Ms. Binchy's childless state affected her writing.

Yet the debate about whether motherhood and writing are compatible is still an issue discussed by magazines such as Mslexia, a specialist publication for female authors, and at almost any gathering of women writers. Do you miss out on something essential about the human condition if you eschew childbearing? Or is the pram in the hall, as Cyril Connolly said, the enemy of promise?

All working mothers are familiar with the double toll of raising a child while earning a living, and when you consider that only a handful of published authors can survive economically purely by writing, there is the added stress of trying to write creatively while doing another job too. Some do as P.D. James, a mother of two, did, rising at 5am to write for an hour before going to the office. Most create their books in what Helen Simpson calls “the interstices of our lives”.

The article suggests that "there is no practical difference between a man and a woman writer when the latter has not had children."  The piece quotes novelist Candia McWilliam as claiming that "every baby costs four books" and it notes that  the "toll isn't only the physical one, of broken nights and infections passed on from playground to parents; it’s also intellectual as you strive to get your little darlings through their exams."

The author, Ms. Craig,  believes that "the very best" female writers include Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës, Virginia Woolf and they were all childless, like Ms. Binchy.   And she thinks that the process of giving birth and rearing a child is a fundamental change for a woman:

Yet that same pain, rage and misery is also hugely enriching. It starts with your own, for even with pain relief, the shock of giving birth changes you for ever. The feelings of intense vulnerability (your own and, more importantly, your child’s), passionate love, joy, bewilderment and exhaustion are unlike anything else. Had Austen, for instance, had a child I wonder whether her focus on romantic love would have survived; childless Anne Elliot’s saintliness as an aunt in Persuasion would certainly have been mitigated by very different feelings.

Ms. Craig feels that the emotional advantage of mothers in having lived feelings that childless women can only imagine are mitigated by other advantages that mothers only reach after their little ones are grown and gone:

Undoubtedly, though, what a childless writer does have is more time and energy. Even if you are truly, madly, deeply in love with your children, there are times when you envy those for whom the school holidays are not a total drain. Somehow, we are never the ones who get to work in Hawthornden Castle, the luxurious writers’ retreat which offers a month of working time uninterrupted by cooking, cleaning or child care. It’s no coincidence that women with children begin to win serious literary prizes once they are over 50.

The author concludes that Ms. Binchy "didn’t need the experience of motherhood to write about love and friendship in a way that charmed millions. But she might have dug deeper, charming less but enlightening more, had she done so."

I've been thinking about this piece.  My first reaction was outrage -- how dare a fellow author suggest that Ms. Binchy's career was hampered or hindered by her not having children!  As I ponder the piece more, I see that the writer is really suggesting that perhaps Ms. Binchy's life was lessened by her not having birthed, adopted or reared a child.  Ms. Craig seems to feel that Ms. Binchy's writing would have been more emotionally astute had she experienced motherhood.

Certainly, I agree that motherhood is an experience that changes a woman in a fundamental way that can not be explained.   I went through this recently with a colleague at work who was childless into her 40's and gave birth a little over 2 months ago.  I kept trying to tell her that her whole world would alter but she couldn't understand that until she had lived it.  Now, I think, she gets what I meant exactly.

But how any of this plays into our writing is unknown and the prejudices of the author show through some of her premises.  For example, Ms. Craig wonders if Jane Austin's focus on romantic love would have survived had Ms. Austin been a mother.  Well, I'm a mother, and the focus on my writing has always been romantic love.  I was a mother long before I became an author, and I still see romantic love as being a fascinating and bottomless well from which to draw.  I don't think stories that touch on women's journeys through life or motherhood are limited, but neither do I think that a motherless life limits an author's perspective.

Those who have and don't have children take different paths, but I don't think one or the other makes you a better or worse writer, more or less likely to win literary glory or more or less likely to set world records for appearances on the bestselling lists.  Writing is always a journey into the unknown and how well or how poorly the journey goes is measured by only one scale that matters --  do readers enjoy the books.

By that scale, Ms. Binchy's career and literary legacy was a resounding success and many lives are richer for having taken the journeys she created.

As for me, I turn 50 in a few weeks and shall await the "serious literary prizes" Ms. Craig mentions -- or not. I doubt that the work of an over-the-top romance novelist will ever win accolades from the ivory tower set, but I have no problem with that.  The only award that matters to me is that readers enjoy my work.

I never knew Ms. Binchy who called herself "an airport writer." She resisted being called a "romance novelist" while I wave the term as proudly as any medieval knight ever waved a banner.  I'd still be willing to bet that the reader's enjoyment was the only award that mattered to her as well.

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At the recent Romance Writers' Association (RWA) convention, Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords - the largest distributor of self-published books, was invited to speak. Since RWA has a long history of being associated with traditionally published authors, inviting Coker to speak was a bit like inviting a lion to lunch.

Coker told the crowd of authors that they should be self-publishing.  He listed some of the advantages:

Total control (of the finished product, of price point, of cover, of everything); a much bigger cut of the net; the same marketing that most authors get if they are traditionally published.

He pointed to examples on Apple's bestseller lists, of self-published authors selling more books and reaping more rewards, sometimes three times that of a Big Six publisher.

"What is the Big Six publisher doing for you?" he asked. With marketing budgets dwindling and bookstores closing, many authors at the conference were asking the same thing.

Then, while the room must have still been quaking, best-selling, Big 6 published author Stephanie Laurens spoke and surprisingly, continued Coker's theme.  Laurens said:

Publishers used to be at the top of the food chain. They hired us. Now, she explained, we are in charge. They work for us, she said, and if we don't like them, we will go elsewhere.

As Laurens gave that speech, staff from her publishing company sat in the audience.  Yes, Laurens had the courage to speak the truth to her colleagues right in front of her publisher.  She must have meant what she said.  I now have mad respect for Stephanie, whose books I have always enjoyed.  As readers of this blog know, I've always been heretical enough to believe that the people who created the work should profit the most from it.

The linked piece is from Huffpo and was written by Elise Saxe, a traditionally published author. That author felt better about her status because she spoke with a RWA attendee who'd been cheering, "Screw the Big Six."   Ms. Saxe says she confessed to being traditionally published and the attendee reacted as follows:

The woman's mouth dropped open, and her eyes grew large. "Really?" she asked. "That's fantastic. How did you do that? I've been trying for ages."

Saxe's reaction?

My blood pressure dropped, and my panic subsided. Staring into her hopeful eyes, her desire to be a Big Six author stamped on her face, I remembered what traditional publishers do so well. They champion an author's work and provide the best in editorial. They have editors of a caliber that can't be found anywhere else. Their books are vetted. If you read one of their books, there's a good chance they are good. They have a reputation.

Hopefully, publishers will catch on to the changes before the authors storm the castle because let me tell you, you don't want to piss off romance authors.

After all, they are in charge of the happy endings.

I think the authors have already stormed the castle and taken down the walls, but I understand the attendee's reaction.  Any author who was writing before the digital age spent as many - if not more- hours polishing query letters and crying over a stack of rejections.  Traditional publication was the only game in town.  So many of us were like wallflowers at the ball watching the Prince dance with Cinderella.   Do you ever lose that moment?  I think not and I think that is what the attendee experienced.

But times have changed and, as Ms. Laurens said, authors are now in charge.  The reader is the Prince and every writer gets to be Cinderella when his or her book is purchased and read.

Thanks to my readers for letting me dance so often!

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Hello kiddies, it's the AOFM again, coming out of his little hidey-hole like an enormous cursing, meth-and-Tourette's-Syndrome-riddled prairie dog with rabies and jock itch.

Just wanted to tell you that Mary Anne's latest 3-for-2 deal is up on the website - The Dangerous Relations Bundle. That's right, you can now buy her three contemporary romances (Seducing the Billionaire, Griffin's Law, and The Office Ink) and get one of them absolutely free!

But hey, the "get one free" deal only works if you buy the other two. So do it today! It's available for the Kindle, Nook, and many other readers via Smashwords.

ALSO - it's a big secret so don't tell anybody, OK? - Mary Anne's romances are now available on Kobo! You know, it's a new site, if the hoi polloi hear about it then it'll get all crowded and you can't get in, yada yada yada... anyways, the bundle will show up there soon. Coming soon as well are buttons to allow you to purchase all the books from the book list page on Kobo.

Oh well, back in the hole I go... GAEIWNDLF)(@&&#@*^^%#!*&^!

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My mind is a strange and many-splintered place.  Odd things excite the little hamster running the wheel that passes for my brain.  This week, my hamster started running and spinning the wheel because I read a book review over on Happy Ever After, USA Today's romance blog.  The book sounds like a fun read.  I'd pick it up in a Myrtle Beach minute - except for one thing - it's a 'torn between two lovers' story.

I hate those.

For me, reading a book is like going to a football game.  If I don't know who to root for, there's no point in showing up.  Say, my hubby and I have left our hometown of Myrtle Beach and are driving around central Florida. We've done that a lot since our eldest is about to start his Senior year at the University of Central Florida in Orlando (Go Knights!). It's Friday night and we pass a high school football stadium.  AOFM isn't going to turn to me and say - "Hey, let's stop and watch this game."

Why not? Because we wouldn't give a fig who won or who lost.  It wouldn't be our youngest's high school (Socastee High in Myrtle Beach - Go Braves!)  We wouldn't know a soul at the random Florida high school. We wouldn't have any skin in the game - no risk, no reward.

When I read a romance, I expect to have skin in the game.  I expect to care for the hero and the heroine.  By all the toad frogs in the pond - I want to cry when the hero and heroine hurt.  I want to root for 'em when they stumble or screw up.  And I really, really want to cheer for 'em when they find their HEA at the end.  Why?  Because that's the point of a romance.  When I open the cover, I've bought a ticket for an emotional roller coaster ride.

Yeah, there should be long pulls up big, ginormous hills, and steep falls going down the other side.  I want some loop-de-loops and some corkscrew turns.  When the ride's over, I want it to land in the right spot.  You know, the spot where the hero and heroine I've been riding with are head over toenails in love and headed for forever bliss.

If I don't know who to cheer for, then I might be rooting for the wrong guy.  I've done that in books.  At the end, I'll hate the heroine for being stupid enough to let Mr. Amazing slip away for a steady, little life with Mr. Acceptable.  I dislike enough people in real life.  I feel like a fool often enough in real life.  I don't get what I want often enough in real life.  I'm not forking over money to have a book make me feel that way.

I won't pick up this one, but I'll keep an eye on Ms. Kargman's work.  It sounds like she can really craft a great story.  And the world is likely stuffed with folks who love reads like this and will pick this book up and adore it.  I'm just not one of them.

I avoid 'torn between two lovers' stories'  because the last thing I want to be in suspense about is the identity of the man who'll be kissing the heroine on the last page.

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Married men and women show love in different ways according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin just completed a study that examines "the widely accepted premise that men and women 'love differently'."  The study used data from 4 points of 13-year marriages.  Surprisingly, it found both genders equally likely to show love through affection.

Researchers found that wives tended to show love by giving their sticks a rest.  That is,  they engage in "fewer negative or antagonistic behaviors."  What does that mean?  It means that to show love, women nag less and shorten their honey-do lists.  Men showed love by offering carrots.  (Stop snickering.)  I mean, men show love by offering rewards;   ie - initiating sex, sharing leisure activities and helping with housework.

What was the conclusion?  The study found that men have been getting short-changed.  Society has widely considered women to be out-and-out better than men at showing love in relationships.  It turns out, both men and women show love in "more nuanced ways than cultural stereotypes suggest."

I guess the ways we show love are as big, and wide and vast as the ways we experience it.  To me, it's just more proof that love can't be limited, labeled or defined.  It only makes sense that the same philosophy applies to lovers.