As an avid reader and romance conference attendee I am always interested in what authors have to say, and so are other readers.
The purpose of this project is to enrich that relationship between readers and authors, those that they have read before, others who they are invited to meet for the first time.
I want this to be a forum where authors are allowed to express themselves more freely thena formal interview and have fun with the project.
I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you are as excited about the project as I am.
Terry Kate
About Me and RITBS
When I started making this site I left this part out, but maybe some people might be interested in what inspired this project. So here it is.
The short version:
The fabulously awesome Black Cab Sessions
The long version:
I have always been a Romance reader. My first real Romance Novel was a Johanna Lindsey, and is still one of my favorites. Later when I went to film school I realized that I was not one of the those students that could watch German Cinema and study Film Criticism all day then go to my room and watch more movies. Those guys do exist, and I was in a very dedicated program where all we took were film classes. I read, and read, and read through five years of college. (I took a year off from a four year program to travel abroad. India was great by the way. There was one little shop in Bangalore where I used to search out books. It is very weird which Romance novels make their way to a used bookstore in India. I even found a YA by Julie Garwood that is so not listed on her site, or anywhere else.) Oh, back to the story at hand.
My concentration is in Documentary Film and I decided to come out of the closet about my love of Romance to some rather, well, highbrow cinephiles and make a Documentary about Romance. It was funny because when other students were talking about their angsty films I was showing nudy man calendars. Everyone in class looked forward to my weekly discussion of how the project was going. One week I laid out all the books a NY editor had given me for everyone to look at and only after class did I realize that one was missing. First thing the next week I stood up and said "I am not saying anyone stole it, but last week my "Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories" went missing." At which point my male teacher raised his hand, confessed, and asked if he could keep it.
Through all this I realized that across the board there is a fascination with Romance. Readers are always trying to connect with their favorite authors, through emails, at signings, Conventions, and the web. The idea for the site came to me while I was listening to a musical artist I went to college with (Langhorne Slim rules :) online. He performed for this fabulous project called the Black Cab Sessions and I was hooked. I started watching all of the different artists who each perform one song, in one take, in the backseat of a Black Cab as it drives around London. It hit me that this is a great way to make interviews interesting. Most of the time Author readings take place in boring conference rooms, or bookstores. Nowhere near as cool. I confess to not being a big one for the internet in the past, but I feel so strongly that this project will benifit the Romance Community, readers and writers alike, that I have joined the online world and decided that interviewing Authors in the intimate setting of a backseat will offer the author-reader connection that we try so hard to develope. So here I am trying to get the lovely women and men who write Romance into the backseat with me. Wish me luck!
Terry Kate
