Friday, February 22, 2008

Driving in the Literary World

The National Post had a funny article last week about the invasion of NASCAR into the literary world. Even if you’re not a racing buff, you’ll find a chuckle in the article.

The first smile from me was when the author, David Menzies, refers to Harlequin as the McRomance publisher:
It was the beginning of a new literary era when McRomance publisher Harlequin teamed up with the hard-left-turn race circuit that is NASCAR to produce ... romantic race car lit.

He goes on to show how cars have played a role not only in romance, but horror. Remember Stephen King’s Christine? And romance – think Corvette Summer. And, of course, outside of the literary world, cars are everywhere in music and advertising.

Think back to books that you’ve read. In just about all of them, cars are involved and usually named. What kind of car (or truck) a character drives says something about them. And some books really center around NASCAR. I’m listening right now to Janet Evanovich’s Motor Mouth. Yep, it deals with car racing.

How about you? How much time do you spend considering what your protagonist drives?

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