Soaps & The Art Of Longing

ecently I learned that Roger Howarth, one of my favorite soap opera actors, had returned to One Life To Live for their last few months on television (OLTL and All My Children will be moving online). I haven't watched a daytime soap in years but hearing that Roger was back was enough to get me to set my DVR and pull up a few old Youtube videos of his past performances to boot.

I stopped watching soaps for the same reason most other people did. The storylines are repetitive and go well beyond the suspension of disbelief, the acting is uneven (which is not to say some of the actors aren't amazing, it's just that some of them really, really suck), they're time consuming and so on and so forth. But there's one thing that soaps can do better than almost anybody else, they can make you passionate about a couple.  I loved Roger Howarth not just because he was one of the best actors on daytime...or any other time of day, but because of his incredible chemistry with Kassie DePaiva who played Blair to his Todd. Their storylines were as silly as all the other soap storylines but the push pull between the two of them was totally engrossing and flat out spectacular.

It just didn't matter what they were doing.  Hating, laughing or loving, it was all good. They were great even when their storylines were far from it. Now obviously Todd and Blair weren't everyone's cup of tea. Some viewers preferred Todd with Tea (Florencia Lozano). On Guiding Light there were Josh and Reva fans and Beth and Phillip fans but the point is that no matter what soap you're watching, the chances are you are dying to have a certain couple get together. You see shades of that with primetime shows but the fans rarely have the same intense emotions about the whole thing. In fact the only shows that mirror that kind of devotion for their couples are nighttime soaps like True Blood (the 21st century's answer to Dark Shadows). 

As an author of women's fiction I feel like it's important to understand how soaps, for all their bad storylines and frequently clichéd dialogue, inspire that kind of devotion from their viewers. It's not just that they're on every day and it's not just that the people who watch these shows are romantics because romantic or not the viewers won't see the romance in the many primetime shows that try to play that aspect up.

I personally think it's the longing.  No matter what the setup is the one thing you know on a soap is that every character is going to be longing for something. It's all they do. They long to find their real parents. They long to get revenge on the ones who hurt them, they long to have their memories back (because they have amnesia...again) and so on and so forth. They have fine tuned the act of longing so it should be expected that when it comes to romance they know how to load it up with extra longing. And if the actors know what they're doing they can make their viewers share in that longing.  I've heard so many soap fans say they want this or that couple to get together and just be happy but honestly, that wouldn't really work. What works is to have them get together and then break up and then fight to be together again. Moments of happiness are fleeting in soaps and although that frustrates fans it also feeds into their longing.  

I'm proud of the fan base I've been able to build for the protagonist in my book series (Sophie) and her love interest, Anatoly. Yes, their relationship has grown over the years and yes it continues to move forward but it's so incredibly volatile that there's plenty of room for arguing, hating, wooing and most importantly, longing. In life we want to keep the longing under control but there's no need for that in fiction. I learned that from daytime TV.

When it comes to make-believe we can "long" as much as we like and those of us who want to tap into that are wise to take note of what has been achieved in Soap Operas. Their ratings may be down, the shows may be canceled but no one who has ever watched a soap will forget about that couple whose longing they felt. 

It's a soap opera legacy to be proud of.

--Kyra Davis

Bestselling Author of

The Sophie Katz novels

and

So Much For My Happy Ending

Why Amazon is Wrong About Sales Taxes

If you're an Amazon Associate you get a very small stipend whenever a visiter to your site clicks on a link you provide to merchandise on Amazon's site and makes a purchase. If you are a California resident you are not an Amazon Associate, at least you haven't been since Wednesday when Amazon severed ties with all of it's California based associates.  The email that they sent out announcing this irritated me to no end. However the source of my irritation has little to do with income. Yes, I'll will be losing a little, but certainly nothing that will make a difference in my standard of living and this frees me up link to other sites I support.

What irritates me is the self-righteous tone of the email.  This idea that Gov. Jerry Brown and California State legislators are passing a new Big-Box-Store-championed tax law specifically because they "...seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors," isn't just misleading, it's a false statement.

Obviously what California is seeking is a way out of a huge fiscal hole that we've dug ourselves into. But the only one who wants Amazon to pull the rug out from under Californian Amazon affiliates is Amazon.  I do understand Amazon's need to utilize competitive pricing. Their ability to underprice everyone is the single most important aspect of their business strategy.  But California legislators (as flawed as they are) are not imposing a new tax on anyone.

See, the law, as it is now, is that only businesses who have a physical presence in California have to charge California sales tax (7.5%). If an online business doesn't have a physical presence in CA Californian buyers are required to declare any item we've purchased online without sales tax. That way we can pay the sales tax we didn't pay at point of purchase when we pay our other quarterly or yearly taxes (no one does this). Now California has decided that Amazon affiliates based in California represent a physical presence and therefore Amazon must tack on the CA sales tax for any Californians who purchase something through their site. The question of whether or not an affiliate represents a physical presence for an online retailer is debatable but this isn't a question of whether or not Californians should pay tax on items bought online. The question is if the collection of those existing taxes should be made possible. If Amazon is the one to collect the tax upfront it's collectable, if it's up to individual citizens to keep track of every online purchase and pay one big lump sum of sales tax at the end of the year it's not.

Furthermore, Amazon could collect the sales tax on California purchases (as the majority of their online counterparts do) and still have more competitive prices than anyone else.  Last week, On Killer Fiction I blogged about several beauty products I purchased, many of which I bought through Amazon.  The eye cream I got, Neocutis Lumiere, normally sells for $95. But it is shipped and sold through Amazon for $51.22. If they added 7.5% sales tax to that price it would bring it up to $55.07. That's still a significantly lower price than any other online or brick and mortar retailer is offering. Another example: My books are generally sold for $13.95.  Amazon sells them for $11.16. If they charged CA sales tax they'd have to add 84 cents onto that price.  Granted it would take away some of their price advantage on the Barnes & Noble (and B&N always charges sales tax) but the pre-tax price of my books on B&N was already $11.18 so Amazon never had a significant price advantage there to begin with. And if someone were to buy three of my books on Amazon they'd get free shipping. B&N will give you free shipping too but only if you pay them a yearly membership fee. So boom, there's your price advantage, Amazon.

In other words, charging sales tax may level the playing field slightly more than it currently is but the playing field still won't even be close to being level. As always, it will be at a very steep tilt with the advantage going to Amazon.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Amazon basher. Independent bookstores and publishers have been hating on Amazon for years. But while Amazon may have contributed to the decline in the physical presence of independent bookstores (and to be fair most of the blame for that goes to B&N and Borders) the independents that did survive are better due to the competition.  I know a lot of people will take issue with that but I don't think that Indie Bound (the excellent website that allows you to order books online from independent book sellers) or independent book-seller-extrodinaire Powell's would have such strong online presences if they didn't know they were up against Amazon. I don't think reader reviews would be posted on booksellers' websites if Amazon hadn't started that trend. And I don't think so many successful published authors would be self-publishing through Amazon if the publishing industry had a better business model. So as a whole I applaud Amazon for pushing book buying and online retailing into the 21st century. I have bought many items from them in the past and I have no doubt that I'll be buy many more from them in the future.

But when it comes to charging sales tax? I'm sorry but their arguments just aren't as compelling as they seem to think they are.

Kyra Davis
Author of
The Sophie Katz Series
And
So Much For My Happy Ending