LIFESTYLES

Romance novels can mean riches

TORONTO (CP) — The students in Scott Hunt Robertson's course want to learn how to write steamy paperbacks they think will make them very, very rich.

The veteran scriptwriter from Alabama — a woman with a man's name — greets her students with a flirty wink and a promise they'll “learn to write it fast, make your mint and go to Spain.”

Her romance writing course attracts everyone from @ retired nurse who wants to be famous to a younger woman who wrote her first book at the age of eight.

“We have more fun than the law allows,” warns Robertson, a jolly, effusive woman of about 50 dressed in pink and white and adorned with a strand of pearls.

She tells students who attend her four-week sessions held year-round that she is a personal acquaintance of the president of Harlequin Books, the mecca to which all aspiring romance novelists bow

The course is one of the most popular offered through the Network for Learning, an organization that offers moderately priced short courses on everything from car

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mechanics to ballet. Robertson's course costs $4, plus $10 for supplies — pink handouts outlining how to formulate character and develop conflict, lists of 36 basie plots, dizzying array of romance lines — each with its own set of romance publishers and their addresses. criteria — that have developed to satisfy haagure readers’

“My classes are full of yuppies,” Robertson said in an demands for such i ients as sex, and history. interview. “They are young men and women who want to write formula fiction.”

She says most of those who take the course — from lawyers, doctors and teachers to bus drivers and architects — are serious fans of the romance genre.

At one session the course attracted 32 people — three men, the rest women of all ages. In the first class they identified themselves by first name only and confessed why they want to write the novels scorned by most literary critics as sexy pap for the mindless, mostly female, masses.

‘TOO EXOTIC’

Those are pretty stiff odds, but Orr says she thinks it is actually getting easier to get a book published because of the

KNOW SPECIALTY,

Robertson tells her students they must know the specialty of each line, which fit into three basic types: sweet, spicy or steamy. Never send a steamy, bodice-ripping saga of sweeping love to the Harlequin Presents line because its books lie somewhere between sweet and spicy — short, modern stories in which any sexual action must be “above the waist.”

On the other hand, some lines require that the heroine be raped by page 30.

Robertson says writers can make between $12,000 and $50,000 per book, depending on how many countries it is published in and the author's reputation.

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5 4 ty! Hi if oH One woman said she “wants to produce those fantastic 8 ¥ ierk i heroes they have in Harlequin.” Another has been writing since she was a child and finally decided she wants to get published. A third woman has submitted five books to Harlequin but had them refused for being ‘too exotic’ and wants to know what she is doing wrong.

Two of the three men blame their presence on women who dragged them along.

Robertson cheerfully acknowledges that would-be novelists shouldn't worry about creating original plots, since all romance novels are “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.”

What's more important is to invent “two good characters,” she advises, because “if you come out with a terrific man and a terrific woman, just change their names and use them for book no. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.”

Develop a well-paced conflict between the two, she says, and any writer is on the way to the bank. However, modern romance novels are considerably more titillating than their predecessors, she warns, and no longer can the conflict be “Will he or won't he get her into his bed?” since that happens as a matter of course.

Thornier conflicts than the old sex question — such as, will she move to Atlanta to be with him and give up her advertising job in Ne ‘ork, or will his first wife ruin their

— now keep readers turning the pages.

Courses such 4s Robertson's have appeared in several communities as the popularity of romance novels continues to burgeon. Kingpin publisher Harlequin recently bought out its major campetitor, Silhouette Books, and now controls about 80 per cent of the market. The company, a subsidiary of Torstar Corp., has a North American readership estimated at more than 20 million.

Catherine Orr of Harlequin's Toronto headquarters says the company receives about 1,000 unsolicited manuscripts a month. Perhaps one will be chosen to join the list of about 56 titles the romance empire publishes each month in North America.

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“If you can write at all, and if you learn the formula — and then do something different — you can make a million,” she says.

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“It just perspiration.”

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Robertson doesn't keep in touch with all her former students, so she doesn’t know how many of them get books published. She says she knows of at least one student from the past year who has had a tentative offer.

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passing permanent lifestyle and. something that demands intervention.

Foot soakers latest fad

TORONTO (CP) — There's a new type of BYOB party — Bring Your Own Bucket.

They're called foot-soaking soirees. While social scien- tists have yet to determine their significance in the scheme of things, they're an obvious attraction to people who spend their days in tight-fitting shoes.

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and adopt anti-social, violent behavior. The centre helps parents define, set up and enforce household rules that put them in charge of their children. But Levine says rock music isn't the root of a

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with your bucket and towel and look over and see ano- ther woman with a bucket and towel and you know you're going to the same par- ty.” says Karen Collet, 34, who works for the provincial government.

The foot-soaker takes a simple approach: massage with oils, bathe in soapy water, dry, apply some apri- cot scrub, put them back in the bucket, pull them out, dry and apply some cream.

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“People have been arguing that since Frank Sinatra's days,” he says. “Rock music is a reflection of where we are, not a cause.”

Besides, says Toronto psychologist Doug Smith, it's almost impossible to steer teenagers aways from what they want.

“One of the norms of adolescence is to do the opposite of what they're told,” says Smith, a family and teen counsellor.

Smith thinks a better approach for parents is to learn more about teenage culture to ensure the family ties are tight as children become adolescents.

After all, he says, many of today’s parents of teenage children were the flower children of the 1960s.

“Of course, being a parent means being caught in a ‘do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do’ situation,” says Blumer. “But, if your child suddenly turns to punk music, and your family life is otherwise normal, | think you have to look at it as a phase or a stage. Suicide or violence is several degrees farther.”

In her new book, Living With Your Teenager (McGraw-Hill Ryerson; $22.95), family counsellor Mar- lene Brusko says loud music around the house doesn't necessarily signal the end of the world. Rather than yell to “shut that damn thing off.” Brusko says you should negotiate times when music can be played at an agreed-upon volume.

“If that doesn't work, then loud music is not the issue,” she writes. “Perhaps you are in an ongoing power struggle.”

It is this larger problem that many families try to disregard. In some cases, teen behavior is used as a scapegoat for general family troubles, when in fact the problems run much deeper.

“I think many times people are reluctant to get help,” says Blumer. “People wait too long because there's a stigma attached to getting help.”

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CALGARY (CP) — Sooner or later just about every new parent who places a birth notice in the paper is going to get a call from a portrait photographer. What should they be looking for?

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MONTREAL (CP) Nas ty practical jokers may occa sionally try to stick some thing to you with all-too efficient glue, but at the Royal Victoria Hospital, a new adhesive is having a profound impact on treat ment

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