Novelist turns away from the romance genre
JAMIE BECK TURNS AWAY FROM THE ROMANCE GENRE
When Jamie Beck began her writing career, she didn’t see herself as a romance writer. Instead, she always felt she was more of a hybrid, with an emphasis in so-called “women’s fiction.”
But after she wrote her first book, the now-53-year-old New Canaan resident had a hard time getting it sold, because it didn’t fit neatly as a romance novel or a pure women’s novel. “Straddling genres has become a lot more common since then,” Beck explains.
She eventually got the book sold, and began a career as a romance novelist, a category that she never truly felt comfortable in. “I never liked being confined,” she says. “And romance has a lot more rules than women’s fiction.”
For instance, romance novels have to focus on a central romance, Beck says, and the main couple has to get together in the end. “A romance reader will throw a book against a wall if the romance doesn’t end in a happy way,” she says.
As she got older, Beck also started to feel out of touch with the genre. “The average romance heroine, they like them to be in their late 20s or early 30s,” she says. “Everything about that age group is different and I was really struggling. I know women older than me who can still do it fine — but for me, it wasn’t working.”
So, when it came time for Beck to submit a new contract, she asked her publisher is she could shift her focus, to women’s fiction with romantic elements. The result is her 16th novel, “If You Must Know,” which will be officially released June 1, but is already available through Amazon Prime’s Kindle First Reads program.
The book is about two sisters, Erin and Amanda, who have been estranged for years when they both reach crossroads in their lives. Amanda, always the more orderly, rule-following sister, finds her marriage upended while expecting her first child. Meanwhile, Erin — long seen as the unstable, unpredictable one in the family — realizes she needs to take more responsibility in her life.
Over the course of the book, the two women gradually start to overcome their differences to become the support that the other needs.
Beck says many elements of the book grew out of people she knew. For instance, the sisters’ mother hires a medium to try and reach out to their deceased father. “My mother-in-law is a medium,” Beck says. “And I thought it might be fun to play with that.”
She also knows a forensic accountant, which helped fuel her storyline about the crisis in Amanda’s marriage. And, although Beck has a brother and not a sister, she’s always been interested in sibling relationships, and the barriers that can sometimes pop up between family members. Though she and her brother are close, she knows of siblings that have become estranged over time.
“In a lot of those cases, there’s not any one thing you could point to” as causing the rift, Beck says. “I was hoping what people would take from the story is that how you treat others affects how they’re going to treat you.”
Though she’s proud of the book, Beck admits that her heart isn’t fully in promoting it right now. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she’s had one promotional event pushed online and one postponed until fall, when she has another book coming out.
But social distancing guidelines aren’t her only obstacle in selling “If You Must Know.” “It doesn’t feel good to try to sell people books when a lot them are suffering and struggling and losing their jobs,” Beck says.
She also knows that a lot of people are having a hard time concentrating on a book in these uncertain times. Beck herself says she’s only read three books in the past couple of months, because she finds it difficult to focus. So, while she hopes people read “If You Must Know,” she looking ahead — to the fall and the publication of her next book.
Just like everyone else, she says, she’s doing what she can to move forward a day at a time. “When I feel overwhelmed, I just focus on the things I can control,” Beck says.