Don ‘t even try it, they said.  

Back in the early days of my writing-career hobby, I would attend writer’s conferences in various locations, trying to learn the craft from so-called experts and I took a few hard knocks with their reviews of my work.  But I always respectfully cursed them under my breath and walked away, then thought about the critique for a few weeks, and belatedly, finally understand they were correct.

But one piece of advice stuck with me.

I joined a group of talkative ‘professional’ female writers at a lunch table at a conference, and they were gracious enough to allow me to join them at the one remaining open seat in the whole auditorium. I was late, and they were probably there an hour earlier, hoping to get served first and score the best seats to trip up literary agents. They looked around, hoping none of their female colleagues wanted the seat, it seems.

“So, what do you write?”  they demanded of me, with half-smiles.  I said, “Thrillers and suspense, and a hodge-podge of short stories, depending on what strikes me at the moment. I throw in romantic scenes when I have to and it fits the story.  They looked at each other, smirked and all chimed in: “We are all romance writers, and belong to the National Haughty Romance Writers Guild.  As you may know, Romance is the number one selling genre in the world.”

I was hoping they were serving scotch, but I guess lunch was too early in the day for that delicious beverage.  So, I took a good strong quaff of my sweet iced tea and said, “Thanks ladies, I didn’t know about that, and sounds like you all belong to an august group of Romance writers.”  The self-appointed chief of their little self-absorbed guild said, “Carson, it’s ok for men to write thrillers and mysteries and shoot-em-ups, but they can’t touch romance.”

“Thanks for the advice, but I agree with you, and I’ll stick to what I do.:” I smiled, ate my lunch and then excused myself, “Nice to meet you ladies, and I wish you continued good luck, but I’m going to go outside and smoke a cigar, possibly with a good glass of scotch.  That will inspire me to figure out which of the valet guys parking your car is carrying a weapon that I’ll have to take away from him if he has evil intentions.”

“Huh”?  They stared at each other wide-eyed as I walked away.

Truth, is I headed right for the hotel bar where I heard some piano music and a base guitar playing some smooth old jazz. What a welcome relief from the Romance Writer’s Guild.   I sat down across from the little 2-piece ensemble, and a dark-haired beauty with a short skirt that clearly enjoyed clinging energetically to her shapely hips, floated towards me, bent over close to me and said, “Sir, what may I get you to drink?”

“I smiled and said, “Glenlivet 12 scotch please.  And no rush.  I’m enjoying the ambience.  And if you don’t mind, please give me about 50 bar napkins.” I forgot my notebook.

She was a little taken aback by that unusual request and decided to say sure thing with a mellifluous voice that awakened my sleepy soul, then the vision of her rhythmic hips walking away with a dancer’s bouncy liveliness invaded me with dizziness that I knew had nothing to do with my two sips of scotch.

She came back with the napkins and my scotch and I thanked her with a smile and started writing. Like wild, word vomit that I couldn’t control, until I had written on about 20 napkins.  She came back to me, noticed the napkins with writing scattered all over the table, then sat down beside me.

“Sir”

“You can call me Carson.”

“Raquel.  What are you writing?”

“I’ll tell you in a little while, right now I am just enjoying the music and your smile.  She crossed her lean legs and shook her heels up and down, and I took a deep breath to calm myself and said, “Raquel, are you still dancing?”

She looked surprised and asked, “How did you know I was a dancer.”

You have grace and the shape of your legs are clearly from a history of ballet.  And probably something more, I think.  Probably higher art and performance.”

“Amazing Carson.  Yes, I was a ballet dancer and yes, I create videos productions for various companies and I write screenplays.  Cocktail waitress is a thing I do occasionally when the contracts dry up.  I have a Master of Fine Arts in theater and movie production and in between, I do some modeling.”

“Ah, makes sense.  So, I was right”

“Yes.  I need to go, Carson, but tell me what do you do?”

“I write novels and short stories and would love to have my work put on the silver screen.”

She handed me her card and said, “Call me, we need to talk.  It’s been nice meeting you Carson.”

My heart was beating about 100 now and with my breathing training I was able to get it back down into the 60s then, decided to head home and enjoy the high ride in the clouds.

Yeah, they were right.  Men can’t write Romance. Or not?

© SRCarson Publications