What about love?

Magnet #1147 - Mills & Boon, Huntley proposes

Today's Mills & Boon magnet was from a good friend who also loves a good love story. I figured it should be used for today, because there are just some things you take for granted will always be around.

Paperback romance books are one. Soap operas are another.

Today, ABC Daytime sounded yet another death knell of soap operas by canceling two of their long-running shows, All My Children and One Life to Live in the coming months, planning on replacing them with ridiculous reality and lifestyle programming.

It's not a surprise to anyone who watches soaps, really. We've known they were dying for years, but we were still surprised when it finally happened.

After all, ABC has been throwing Hail Mary passes for years, trying to keep the shows afloat - moving productions across country, skimping on production values, overworking their talent and crew, reducing show orders, and myriad other tactics.

Ironically, instead of saving the shows, quality suffered immensely, viewers left in droves, leaving ABC to finally manage to drive the shows into the ground.

To be sure, the economic impact is going to be scary - hundreds of people will now be out of work, not to mention the trickle-down effect to other ancillary outlets (industry magazines, a steady stable of pretty talent to pull for other shows, marketing, production, etc.).

But more dramatically (and fittingly so), there's an emotional impact that canceling these two shows will have. It's been playing out all over Twitter and FB all day - stories of how folks watched it with their mothers and grandmothers, of how the families of Pine Valley and Llanview are like real families, of how these shows have helped shape generations of women and men since they started airing more than 40 years ago.

And, if you think about it, these TV families have been coming into people's homes for 40 years, it's no wonder that there's a real sense of loss and betrayal from the audience.

It's fairly sad-making, no matter how much we were prepared for it.

Anyway, too many other folks will write scathing and/or objective autopsies of what ABC did wrong over the last decade, and still other folks will write heartfelt good-byes to the shows, so I won't go on about it anymore.

But, I have to believe this: Romance is still the best-selling genre for a reason.

There will always be men. And there will always be women. And there will always be men and women falling in love with each other.

Which means that it doesn't matter what format it's in, there will always be great love stories to tell.

Now we just have to look harder find them.

Bring romance to life

Magnet #1081 - Mills & Boon

My friend bought me this Mills & Boon cover art magnet. Dunno what a Mills & Boon is? You're not alone. There's a whole world out there that you're missing! Or several, if you want to get technical. They're the leading UK publisher of women's romances, owned by Harlequin, one of the leading North American publishers of women's romances.

When I got this magnet, I immediately went online to see if I could find the title of the book that surely went along with it, but to no avail. I did, however, end up buying The Art of Romance: Mills & Boon and Harlequin Cover Designs, which gives an excellent overview of their romance covers, going all the way back to their early days of 1908.

Like, early days, when they were Jack London's UK publisher. Seriously. Jack London. Yes. That Jack London.

Since those days, M&B and Harlequin have published thousands of romances and romance series all around the world. According to that anniversary book, there's an M&B book sold in the UK every three seconds!

The really fascinating thing about flipping through these covers and titles is that you actually can see the change in romance reading culture over the century. From noir mysteries to wartime stories about women in the WAF, or doctors and nurses, or MINOs (Marriages In Name Only), or sheikhs and their captive brides, to all the brides, babies and cowboys of today, you can't really tell if they're driving the market, or if the market is driving the content. It's probably a little bit of both, honestly.

One thing's for sure, I'm totally headed to the nearest book store in London in June, so that I can pick up a few choice titles. Mind you, they won't be as great as Take Me! Break Me!

Or Brittle Bondage.

Or Grace Before Meat.

Or Pardon my Body.

But, I'm sure they'll be almost as good.