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From Phyllida's Desk

Recognition

One of the biggest thrills for a writer--for anybody who does creative work--is to be recognized. It's especially true if the work you do is seen as "light" or not serious, like comedy and, especially, genre fiction.

Two things have happened to me recently that have made me feel recognized. First, I got a Wikipedia entry. After author Pam Rosenthal gave a presentation at the second IASPR conference last year (International Association for the Study of Popular Romance), in which she discussed Pride/Prejudice in the context of Queer Theory, a very nice person named Molly R. Klein made Wikipedia entries for all the authors Rosenthal mentioned in her paper.

I've put the link to the entry into the top Quick Links spot on the right-hand column of my website, if you're interested.

The second thing is that Phyllida has made it into a big new reference work, The Cambridge History of the American Novel. Romance scholar Pamela Regis was chosen by the publishers to write the chapter on "Female Genre Fiction in the 20th Cenury." She, naturally, believes that "female genre fiction" equals Romance Novel, and in the limited space available to her picked out those few authors and books that she felt had made a notable contribution to the development of the genre.

And so I'm included among such stars of the genre as Jennifer Crusie and Beverly Jenkins as writers who helped to make the genre more diverse. Which I think we can all agree I did!

I'm sorry to be boasting publicly, yet again, and with nothing new to offer readers as a way to make up for my bad behavior.

This month, as you know, is full of events for me, and next month, June, is also busy. But later this summer I'm hoping to offer readers some fun material, some e-books of stories and novels I wrote a while ago.

I'll be letting you know about this as I get closer to the "publication" date. For now, many thanks for being my readers and for putting up with the long waits between books. I'm slow, but I hope what I produce is worth waiting for.
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