Betsy Horvath

Author: Betsy Horvath

  • Cats of Hogwarts

    J. K. Rowling has four houses in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Harry Potter, for those of you who have been living under a rock).

    I have four cats.

    Ahhhh… I see you know where I am going with this. And you would be right! It recently occurred to me that each of my four cats represents a house at Hogwarts. Allow me to elaborate:

    Hufflepuff

    Real name: Oliver Wendall Holmes Horvath.
    Oh, how can you look at my boy Oliver and not think “Hufflepuff”. He’s a homebody, he loves the kitchen, and he’s very fuzzy. Perfect!

    Ravenclaw

    Real name: Tasha Tudor Teddy Bear Horvath.
    She’s very smart and very sweet, but she can kick some butt if she has to!

    Slytherin

    Real name: Emily Dickinson Horvath.
    She’s not exactly bad, but she sure can be sneaky! And she beats up all of the other cats unless they hit her first. By the way – I often sing “I’m in love with a Slytherin girl” to Emily. She likes it. No accounting for taste.

    Gryffindor

    Real name: Edgar Rice Burroughs Allen Poe Horvath.
    He started out life on the streets of New York, but now he’s come into his own. Considering how he began, and how well he’s adapted, I have to say that he’s one of the bravest cats I know.

    There you have it. The houses of Hogwarts as personified by my cats. Now if only they would use their magic and do the dishes.

  • What Romance Is, and What It Is Not


     
    As I mentioned in an earlier post, a few months ago I had a run-in with a rather rude man at a Barnes and Noble. As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the romance genre, about what it is and what it isn’t. What follows are my humble opinions on this subject, for what they are worth.
     
    What Romance Is
     
    In a romance, whether novel or subplot, two people come together and form an intimate bond. At the end of their story arc, no matter how long it takes to get there, they have remade their world. They are now a unit beyond the sum of their parts. If their world is not remade, the story is not, in my opinion, a romance.  “Happily ever after” is required. Under this definition, a book like Wuthering Heights is not a romance. A book like Pride and Prejudice, however, is.
     
    What Romance Isn’t
     
    In today’s market, Wuthering Heights would probably be considered “chick lit”. I really hate that term, because basically “chick-lit” is just old-fashioned literature written by and about women. Romance can certainly be a part of a “chick-lit” novel, like Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. But whereas the point of a romance novel is two people learning to become one whole, the point of “chick-lit” tends to be self-discovery.
     
    Romance heroines grow and change and go on journeys of self-discovery too, of course they do. A romance novel would be pretty boring if the hero and heroine didn’t change! It’s just that the main point of a romance novel is the discovery of intimacy with the “other”, and that is not the main point of a “chick-lit” novel.
     
    Because romance deals with intimacy, and intimacy between two adults is often expressed in sex, romance novels contain sex.  The sex is of varying degrees of intensity, depending on author and subgenre. But regardless of erotic content,  a romance novel is NOT erotica or pornography.
     
    In erotica, the individual’s journey of self-discovery takes the form of an exploration of sexuality. The other people involved in those sexual exploits are, so to speak, tools for the journey. It may be that there will be an emotional bond with one or more of them, but that isn’t the point of the story. The point of the story is the sexual exploration.
     
    And porn? Well, what can I say. In pornography both the viewer and the viewed are objects. Ain’t no journey happening there except the journey towards…*cough*… well. Let’s just say that character development is not a priority one way or another.  True intimacy is not involved.
     
    So, there you go. My opinion of what romance is – and what it isn’t.

    I’m glad I have a blog now so I can share these deep thoughts with you.  I’m sure you are glad as well. 🙂

  • A Post About The Book

      

     

    As of the writing of this post, what I believe are the final changes for my book, HOLD ME, have been returned to my editor.  In celebration, I thought I’d share some relatively amusing behind-the-scenes factoids about HOLD ME in case anyone was even remotely interested. So, here we go:

    • The heroine’s name is Katie. She was named after Kate Jackson, of Scarecrow and Mrs. King fame.  Katie doesn’t look anything like Katie Jackson – I just liked the show.
    • The hero’s name is Lucas Vasco. Luc has a picture of Katie taken when she was a young girl. The inspiration for that came from a calendar of Ireland I had hanging in my office a few years ago.  One of the photos was of a young girl with a mass of red, curly hair backlit by the sun. I looked at it and thought – “that’s Katie.”  One of my stupider moves was not saving that picture.
    • Katie drives an ancient dark green Chevy Nova.  Ah, the Nova.  It was my beloved first car, and was not nearly so ancient then as it would be now.  Besides, that old boy could move! Eight cylinders, baby. Crank up the tunes and put the pedal to the metal.
    • Luc has a Newfoundland dog named Spot. Spot is based on Newfoundland dog my friends used to own named Ned. Well, except that Spot is a girl and Ned was a boy. And Spot is young, but Ned, when I met him, was a trifle elderly. But Ned was indeed a Newfoundland dog.
    • If you were sitting down in a chair and Ned sat in front of you, he was right at your eye level. It was a little intimidating. Spot’s not quite that big, but she’s big enough!

    And there you have it. Just a few fun facts about my baby. Stay tuned for more information about covers and release dates as soon as I get them.

    HOLD ME – coming soon to a digital bookseller near you.

  • Everything I Know About WordPress

    As you may, or may not, know, I built this blog using WordPress.  This enterprise has been a very character-building experience and has enlightened me in ways I am only beginning to comprehend.  I would now like to sum up everything I’ve learned about Wordpress in a single blog post.

    You may have noticed that this is not an exceptionally long post.

    Okay, first of all there are two WordPresses – WordPress.com and WordPress.org.  WordPress.com is a free, hosted site. WordPress.org is free software, but you have to provide your own hosting and domain name.  In other words, WordPress.com uses WordPress software, but you can use the WordPress software yourself at WordPress.org.  Got that?

    Good.

    WordPress.org is more complicated than WordPress.com. That’s why I, a non-web designer and marginally technical person, chose that platform. Because if it was going to be harder to use and more difficult to understand, I was all over it!

    I am, obviously, insane.

    Here’s a list of everything I’ve learned over the last few fun-filled weeks about WordPress, specifically WordPress.org:

    • You’ll need to get your own hosting company. Preferably one who won’t mind if you open a helpdesk ticket five minutes after you sign up with them. Like I did.
    • You’ll need to get your own domain name. 
    • Installing the initial program is pretty easy.
    • There are a lot of design templates out there to choose from.
    • You can customize pretty much anything you want to customize.
    • It’s not “plug and play” if you want to customize anything.
    • You’ll need to write actual code if you want to customize stuff.
    • It would be good to be familiar with HTML code BEFORE you start trying to customize stuff. As opposed to after you start.  Trust me.
    • Customizing all of the stuff you can customize takes a LOT of time. It’s like taking on a second full-time job and will make you very sleep-deprived.
    • You may need to drink heavily.
    • You must remain calm and keep hands and feet inside the car at all times.
    • Remember that there might be a need to panic, but you don’t have to give into it because you are stronger than the computer and have opposable thumbs.
    • If the page looks stupid, the internet is forever and nothing ever goes away in cyberspace.
    • But there’s no pressure.
    • And no one will hear you scream.

    Finally, when all is said and done, here is the most important thing I’ve learned about WordPress over the past few weeks….

    Hire someone else to set your blog up for you!

  • Why Romance?

    A few months ago, I was in my local Barnes and Noble. As I stood, innocently browsing the stacks in the (rather pitiful) Romance section, a man came from the in-store Starbucks, wife/girlfriend in tow. He walked up to me, laughed, and said, sneering, “Romance? Why Romance?”

    I promise you that this actually happened. It was a moment.

    The encounter, although undoubtedly rude, did raise a couple of questions in my mind and I’ve been mulling them over since then. Here they are in a nutshell:

    1. Why romance? Specifically for me, but also what is so appealing about the romance genre? What makes it the best selling genre out there?
    2. What exactly IS romance? How is it different than erotica or even pornography?
    3. Why would a complete stranger feel such contempt for my reading choice that he would confront me in a public place? Why am I somewhat sheepish when I admit that I write and /or read romance?

    Don’t worry. I’m not even going to try to address all of these questions in this post (and I hear a massive – thank God). But I have been thinking about them, and I think they’re worth talking about.

    So, first, as the rude man asked, Why Romance? Why do I love reading romance? Why do I want to write romance? What is it about this genre that appeals to so many people?

    The author Harold Kushner said, in a very different context, that to be human is to constantly search for intimacy. I think he’s right. We want intimacy. We want to find the “other”, to understand and be understood. We want to know that we are not alone.

    I think that in this sense, intimacy equals importance. We long to be important to someone else. We want our lives to matter. We want someone to choose us. Joseph Campbell said that, love means “I choose you.” For better or for worse, I choose you. YOU are my choice. Nobody else, just you.

    And, in my opinion, therein lies the beauty of the romance genre.  Romance is all about the choice. The importance. The intimacy.

    When we read or write romance, we are invited into the choice two people make for each other. Through the mystery of story, we share the choice with them. They love each other and, when the story is done right, we love them. We share their emotions and their importance. And by sharing it, we take away some of it for ourselves.

    So how did I respond when the rude man confronted me at the Barnes and Noble? I was actually pretty proud of myself.  I laughed at him, because I felt sorry for him and because he deserved to be laughed at. Then I said, “Why not Romance? What could be more important than love?”

  • The First Post

    Hello, Blogosphere!

    *silence*

    Hello?  Hello! *tap tap* Is this thing on?

    *crickets chirping*

    Blogosphere! I will NOT be ignored!

    *snort* *cough* Huh?

    Well, it’s about time. Where have you been?

    Hey, I fell asleep waiting for you to finally finish your fricking blog.

    Yeah, well you didn’t warn me when I picked my platform that I was going to have to figure out HTML coding in a week. In. A. Week.

    Cry me a river, girlie. You’ve got friends…well, okay, two–

    HEY!

    –but at least one of those two knows a little bit about computers. You could have gotten help.

    I do it mySELF!

    Is this whining the only reason you woke me up? I was dreaming about Charlie Sheen again.

    You know, if you’re not nice to me, I’ll go somewhere else.

    Yeah, right. Where you gonna go, huh? I’m the fricking BLOGOSPHERE. I’m fricking huge! I rule! One Blogosphere to rule them all!

    *taps foot* Are you through? Can we get on with this now? I have work to do.

    Like writing? Oh, wait. You’re spending all of your time with ME now. MWHAHAHAHA!

    *crosses arms*

    Okay, okay. Sheesh. No sense of humor. *rummages around* *finds notes* Ummm…okay…  Hello, Betsy.

    Hello, Blogosphere.

    So, um, this is your new blog, hey?

    Yes it is!

    Uh huh. And I see here that you are a… does this say “roman writer?” Really? I didn’t know Horvath was Italian.

    It’s Hungarian. And you know perfectly well that I’m a romance writer.

    Yeah. *sneer*

    Oh, oh I SO have a few things to say to you about that.  You and me, Blogosphere, talkin’ about the romance. You just wait.

    Greeeaaaattt.

    I’m serious. Plus I figure we’ll chat aobut writing and reading and working and life.

    Well, that narrows it down.

    And cats.

    Of COURSE cats. Why am I not fricking surprised? You probably have a hundred of them.

    Only four.

    Now.

    You know what? I think we’re finished here for today. I can’t even deal with you right now.

    Not too many people can.

    *heavy sigh* And I was going to start my blog off with a quote.

    Well, you shoulda. Then I could’ve totally ignored you.

    A nice quote from Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll? It goes – “the time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.”  I’ve just been waiting to use that quote somewhere. But nooooo. I have to talk to you instead.

    Hey, no skin off my nose…er, noses. You should have stuck with the classics.

    I thought people would think I was calling myself a walrus.

    You know, I’ve been meaning to talk–

    *shoves Blogosphere out of post*

    Okay, well. Um, this concludes my first post.

    Thank you.