Being sick in a book

The best way to remove characters from a novel is to have them die.

This can be achieved in several ways.

1. They can be murdered, which is necessary in a murder mystery.
2. They can die in a war, which is necessary for almost any book.
3. They can be killed in an avalanche, flood, earthquake, asteroid attack. That's pretty handy in an opus.
4. They can die of a disease, which usually happens as a means of creating sadness, angst or a sense of indefinite helplessness. I tried to save him but he was too far gone.

What we seldom see in books is attempts to save the infirmed. Oh, the good doctor orders up some tea or chicken soup, rest and "keep him warm and comfortable. The rest of it is in God's hands."

The crap about God intervening or having a role is useful because a recovery, regardless of how predictable, can be attributed to prayer or a divine miracle. Divine miracles, when actually in use, can make a difference in the outcome of the whole book.

What's missing are remedies that transcend chicken soup and herbal tea. Those deal with the bowels, the kidneys, the liver and continence overall. Do some research on this. You will learn that patent medicine killed more people than it cured.

Carter's Little Liver Pills are still around. You just need to watch more television.

And become a complete idiot by doing so.

Still, if you want realism in your books, going to the bathroom regularly can keep your characters alive. Although, asteroids might be a slightly more complex problem. The remedies are still being sold on the internet and on offbeat cable TV programs, mostly by borderline actors or sideshow celebs.

The doctors are mostly scoundrels who've managed to retain their licenses by convincing the AMA that they aren't doing any harm.

The difference now is that one traveled by horse and wagon in the olden days. This is not a character to be overlooked. At times, the treatment is more interesting than the outcome.

And it only costs $1.

RWA ... the bane of romance

Over the last few years, lately (2020) more pronounced, comes an internal battle with the arcane Romance Writers Association, which has been universally panned, dissected, drawn, quartered and burned at the stake by almost everyone.

It's easy to do that when you have people patting you on the back for joining in on the torch-burning procession up Frankenstein's Hill.

RWA is one of those demagogue organizations that was set up to promote an agenda and allowed the agenda makers to change the rules. Chief complaint evidently is about racism.

Well, that is the chief complaint about everything now. Success or failure depends largely on which side of the fence you choose to stand. Even if you don't have a fuckin' idea about racism, you get to have an opinion about it. If you don't have a fuckin' idea, the people who are being racism-ed will surely let you know this. (You can't know what it's like to be ................)

To RWA's credit, they've apparently come out publicly saying they intend to address the problem. That's not good enough for the steamroller faction, which insists that RWA is lying about that and the proof is .......... well, somehow out there.

Women of color or indefinite gender are the heroes of this story, since they apparently are the chief victims. The regular (white, racist, southern) writers are the villains because they allowed this culture to exist and thrive.

I reckon that's true.

Romance as a genre contains 4 characters -- the two would-be lovers and somebody on either side of that line who either promotes the relationship or is determined to see it fail. There's not much of a story line beyond that. They skip over the plot to get to the sexy scenes, then pretend they are doing the plot again until the climax, where HEA or HFN happens.

Being angry about how that happens is the current trend. The gayness of it all is apparently abhorrent to RWA and lord-forbid, a "colored" perspective should emerge.

The Inuits of northern Alaska are yet to weigh in on that, but as a representative group, RWA has caustically overlooked it in favor of Paula Dean southern fried chicken and the 21st century version of Rhett Butler.

Whatever RWA does to fix its image will never be enough, the critics say, because it will have been a sham and a superficial lie that will re-emerge later on. Of course, it's impossible to not be a member of this group.

Everybody else just thinks they need to file a lawsuit, which never fixed anything but the lawyers' bottom line. It's always better to sink the ship than inspect the cargo before it sails.

The Inuit are interested in seeing their romance stories explored. Anybody advocating for them this year?