Carando to the Rescue

The rider on the white horse who rescued Fiorella?  None other than Patricia "T" Carando--again. She has been Fio's electronic savior too many times to count this past year, and your faithful correspondent is muy grateful.

What happened this time, you ask.  Fio's icons wouldn't open.  First she lost access to her email icon (again), and then she lost access to all her other programs except (whew) the one for the romance she is writing. Fiorella promptly sent out a panicked SOS to T and met with her at Starbucks, where all good writers meet.  The mighty T began by wrestling with Fio's email situation, which was caused by the failing mechanisms of Windows Live Mail (no longer supported by Microsoft), and which will necessitate Fio changing to gmail in the near future.  Then, while Fiorella raced back home to pick up her credit card so she could buy chocolate chunk cookies, T restored her other programs.

All is now well in Casa Fiorella, thanks to T Carando.  Well, T Carando and chocolate chunk cookies.

Romance as a Business

Fiorella heard a very good talk at her local Romance Writers of America meeting last night, but it was also disturbing.  The speaker was charming, likable. organized, and knew what she was talking about, which was how to pound out book after book and sell, sell, sell.  The answer, of course, is IT--information technology--and the speaker knew her programs backward and forwards, totally unlike the traditional image of the romance writer whose husband discovers her the next day, asleep at the card table she's set up in the kitchen, with her pages sprawled in front of her.

And totally unlike Fiorella, who angsts it out on the couch in the den or upstairs in her supposed office with her computer balanced in her lap, who writes and rewrites, who strives for originality, who has messages of hope and strength she's trying to get out.

Whatever happened to the romance of romance writing?   Whatever happened to the story?