All About Jane's Ranch

Palace of the Blue Butterfly | Episode 8

Okay, so I’m a romantic. I admit it. Maybe because I’m from the South, but I love the Gothic. I love crumbling buildings draped with vines, overgrown gardens with a bit of wildness in them, anything scented and sultry and dark.

The hyacinths I wrote about are now gone, but the Lilac — OMG — planted right by the (antique, of course) gate smells divine. It makes even carrying groceries from the car a romantic experience. The lilacs will fade, and in their place, the old Bourbon rose, Madame Issac Perrier, will bloom. After that, I HAVE to have gardenias.

This summer I’m going to try growing the gardenias in containers on the porch. I’m even going to get a misting fan — one of those reproductions that looks like it could have been in Havana in the twenties — to give them the humidity they need. It will be worth it, though. The scent of white gardenias on a summer evening will transform hot, hot August into something well, romantic.

And because I’m southern and grew up with a lot of storytellers, I listened to many ghost stories out on the porch at night. I can still hear them in my head along with the moths batting against the screens and the frogs croaking in the creek. Well, put all that together, and, I guess, I’m a natural for Romantic Suspense.

As I was growing up, the south was modernizing fast, so by the time I got to Mexico, that country seemed more southern to me than the south, more gothic, more brooding and, yes, more romantic, like this hacienda on the left.

Doesn’t this ruin sort of remind you of what the setting might have looked like if Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca had been set in Mexico?

A confession. I’m working on a novel set in one of these crumbling old hennequin plantations in the Yucatan. Like Rebecca this as-yet-untitled-book has ALL the gothic elements of my kind of Romantic Suspense: the independent woman of little means, the brooding mansion, the secrets, the malevolent presence, the wounded hero. And the Yucatan? That, too. Just imagine the colonial ruins, the cenotes, the howler monkeys, a naive protagonist, a wealthy, jaded expat. Hey, I’m there!

You see, I envision writing a series of novels, each one set in a different location in Mexico. Bird of Paradise (my first novel) is set on the west coast of Mexico, and even though the drug lords roam the streets and highways, there’s still the feisty protagonist of little means, the secrets, the brooding… well you get the picture. Of course, Palace of the Blue Butterfly , set in Mexico City, has, as you know, all those things and more, and now . . . Well, you just have to click and listen to find out.

Palace of the Blue Butterfly | Episode 5

Here’s the way I look at it. If I weren’t supposed to enjoy reading and writing books like Laura Caldwell’s ChickLit/Romantic Suspense novels, would hammocks, Lipton’s Diet Ice Tea with Lemon and Bain de Soleil suntan lotion ever have been invented? I think not, girlfriends.

So what is Chick Lit? And why do women like it? Well, as Laura Caldwell herself says, “[Chick Lit] connotes a work that appeals to women, and has as its primary objective, the desire to entertain.”

Wow. Think about it. Where else in society can we find something whose primary objective is to appeal to us, entertain us?

Not something that exhorts us to be better—lose weight, get that mammogram, cook healthy Crock-Pot, family meals?

Not something that plays on our weaknesses so we go out and buy cosmetics and shoes?

Not something that leaves us feeling slightly like failures because, according to whatever we’re reading, we failed to do X?

I don’t know, but chocolate doesn’t count. Its primary objective is just to be chocolate.

However, with Chick-Lit, someone actually sat down and spent a great deal of time, energy, imagination and what-have-you with the sole objective of entertaining us ladies. People can turn their noses up at it, but in a world that works against women much of the time, Chick/Lit tells me that I, and my female world, matter. Sounds sort of important to me.

Anyway, Laura Caldwell merges the genres of Chick/Lit and Romantic Suspense, and her success blazes a trail for other women like me (maybe you?), and other novels like mine (maybe yours?). Caldwell’s books create a shelf in the bookstore for what I call trans-genre novels. You know, books that otherwise might have seemed deviant to publishers, books that had ummm . . . genre issues. They really used to hate that. But hey, remember when I said I thought everything I had in life was because some woman somewhere did something she wasn’t supposed to do? Well, here’s another example.

Like other Chick-Lit/Romantic Suspense writers, I write for women. I write about what that great ChickLit writer of the 19th century—none other than Charlotte Bronte— called the “stormy sisterhood” of the passions. In novels, like in life, I want to be on the edge of my seat even if that seat is a hammock by the beach.

Well, it’s that time of year now when you’re gathering up your beach reading. This time add beach listening to the list. Just follow the instructions on how to download for a Mac or PC. Then pop in your earbuds, close your eyes, rock in the hammock and listen to . . .