Hildegarde

Before I get started today, I want to point out that we just had another problem with the program refusing to let people sign on to post comments. 

So, you know, if you have the problem, e-mail me, and we’ll register you manually.

And, back to the blog–

First, the Natalie Maines thing.  

What Maines actually did was to go on stage in England and apologize for the United States.  The fans in the audience didn’t boo her.  In fact, they cheered. 

Where she got into trouble was with country music fans in the US, who are self-consciously and vocally patriotic, much the same way that rock fans are usually not. 

Dixie Chicks records, airplay and concert attendance actually went UP after that incident, since they had a large crossover audience in rock and pop who saw nothing at all wrong (and something right) about what Maines had said.

But the Maines incident is not the kind of thing I’m talking about.  Maines made her statements on her own–they weren’t the subject of her song, for instance.

And country and rock both are perfectly happy to allow artists to use political, religious or other themes in their work.  Yes, country expects those sentiments to be pro-American and rock expects them to be anti-American, but nobody disputes the right of singers and song writers to write about politics.

What goes on with cozies–and with category romance in the Eighties–is very different.   It’s a demand that writers not write about politics, or religion, or anything else that might be “upsetting.”

Cozy readers these days do think of Agatha Christie as a “cozy” writer, but it’s because her work was written far enough in the past not to seem real.  There is, for the average cozy reader of the type I’m talking about, no difference between Agatha Christie’s villages and the fey imaginary small towns where the local knitting shop owner has to solve all the murders.

The demand is not for politics the readers agree with, it’s for no politics–that causes strife and dissension and pressure.  They read to get away from politics (somebody actually wrote me that).  

With religion, the demand is a little more complicated–there’s no problem with presenting a sort of fuzzy-warn “spiritual” point of view where religion means being nice to everybody.  There is a problem, though, with presenting a family being torn apart by disparate religious views, because that is, again, “upsetting.”

This is, I think, why I get so crazy when people tell me they read to “escape.”  This is the kind of thing I think of–the demand for a fake world with all the kinks ironed out of it.  Nothing really bad ever happens.  Even the murders are kind of cute.  And there are no intractable problems, no pains in life that can’t be somehow smoothed over with platitudes and folksiness.

This is not a world that lacks political statements the readers dislike–it’s a world that lacks the very fact of politics, because politics is “upsetting.”

I agree that this kind of fan is in the minority, but it’s not only a very vocal minority, but a powerful one.  It has its own conventions, its own awards, its own web sites and magazines.   And it’s willing to yell, scream, bitch and throw a fit if it doesn’t get what it wants or (more likely) gets what it doesn’t want.

And so, generally, it does get it–but that also explain why the other kind of fan won’t touch anything labeled “cozy” with a ten foot pole.   They see things labeled “cozy” and they think, “oh, it’s got recipes and the cat solves the mystery.”

I agree with everybody here who said that, in the long run, writers who write not what they believe but what they think fans want to hear will fall off the face of the planet–but that’s the long run.  In the short run, they’ll get invited to present keynote speeches at convention banquets, get written up on a dozen web sites, and have small bookstore owners with a cozy bent stage parties for them.

The total sales will never be what a “serious” mystery writer makes, and the run won’t last that long–but it will be a nice little run while it does last.

And, in the meantime, publishers tie themselves into knots trying to find a word to describe “cozies” (in the Dilys Winn definition) that aren’t “cozies” (in the standard fan definition), because if they don’t come up with a different word, they end up selling the book to people who don’t want it and not selling the book to people who do.

This is, by the way, the reason a lot of you here say you have a hard time finding new authors you’ll like. 

There’s just not a word out there for what you–and I–like.  

I’m not a fan of “police procedurals,” which tend, to me, to be like having to watch a Law and Order marathon.  I would never have picked up a novel by P.D. James–my all time favorite mystery writer–if it had been described to me like that. 

My guess is that there has to be a word out there that would fit, but we haven’t found it yet.  And I’m stuck in the position where, if I’m looking for a traditional mystery and I pick up a cozy, I don’t get a traditional mystery but a piece of exaggerated fluff.

And it’s worse than you think, because I don’t even have zero tolerance for exaggerated fluff.  MacLeod did exaggerated fluff quite often, and I liked a whole lot of it.

I have absolutely no idea what we’re supposed to do about all this, but it’s the reality we’re living with now.

And I’m trying to launch a new series.