Right now, I’m supposed to be at a booksigning in Ottawa called Prose in the Park. If you expected to see me there and didn’t, please accept my apologies for my absence.

I have been writing and publishing romantic fiction—and earning my living my doing so—since 1992. That’s more than 25 years of being involved with the literary community, reader conferences, book events and wholesale trade shows for the publishing industry. I have been surprised from the get-go at the lack of respect shown to commercial fiction authors, genre fiction authors and particularly romance authors at these events. I don’t understand why anyone feels it’s okay to be rude about other people’s reading choices, and I certainly don’t understand why organizers of events always skew in favor of authors of literary fiction—but they do. Somehow, authors who write literary fiction are deemed to be better and more valuable. It’s…