CULTURE | Hannah Guy is a Harlequin girl.

Throbbing manhood? Member? Shaft? Actually, in the world of Harlequin, those words are out. According to Hannah Guy, 30, a Toronto freelancer who creates copy for the covers of Harlequin romance novels, these days it’s all about “erection”. Here, Jen Selk from Dose talks to her about working in the land where heaving bosoms abound.

A selection of Harlequin book covers, Google Images.

Dose JS: How’d you find out about the job?

HG: The Jeff Gaulin journalism board … Maybe just to take the load off, they were looking for freelancers who would do copy writing for book covers, manuscript evaluators and copy editors. I think I scared them a bit when I did the copy editing. I decided to go completely nuts on the manuscript.

So you had to do a test?

They screened resumes. Then everyone was sent a test. For copy writers, they gave you a sample text and you were supposed to write 130-150 words of copy for the cover.

How long was the sample text? Like do you have to read the whole book?

No no, it was just a summary. It might have been just a couple of pages. I get both. Sometimes they’re reprinting so I’ll get an actual book, bound. Sometimes I get manuscripts, which are essentially 200 pages of typewritten text … or I will get a summary. They can be anywhere from 100 words to four or five pages. Sometimes my copy is longer than the summary I was given. You really have to be careful. It requires a very light touch. Because you’re trying to sell the book, and you haven’t read it, so how do you sell it?

How do you feel about romance novels?

Ooh tricky. And you’re going to publish this aren’t you? I am first and foremost a reader and a writer. So most of my romance reading ended when I was probably in grade 10 though a brief read-a-thon with Danielle Steele. I didn’t read Harlequins before I started doing this job, and now I’ve read a tonne of them. It’s a wonderful genre, but I don’t think it’s for everyone.

So you don’t buy them?

Harlequin is trying to modernize the look and feel of those books, but I still probably wouldn’t pay for them, because I can read them in an hour or two. But when they send them to me, I read them all the time.

How does it compare with your other jobs?

It is actually my favourite job right now. A lot of my friends who also write kind of chuckled at me about it. There were lots of jokes about me suddenly having a heaving bosom and that sort of cliché. It’s actually easier for me and far more creative than simple proofing.

Talk about being with Harlequin.

I’ve been with them for over 2 years. It’s a single night’s work for me. You sit down and read the manuscript and then get to it. I find it so fun. And the pay is fairly good, considering the amount of work put in. It’s actually paying my rent right now. It’s not like a single assignment will do that, but I get enough assignments to pay my rent.

Do they still say things like “throbbing manhood?”

The recent trend, instead of saying things like manhood or shaft (throbbing manhood?), the big one to use is erection. That one is used fairly often.

Do you notice your work on the shelves?

Oh yeah. Whenever I’m in a bookstore – like I was in World’s Biggest Books [sic] last week – but I’ll beeline to the harlequin section to see if I’m there. I always am. I usually notice at least one of the books I worked on the shelf.

Do you want to get into writing Romance yourself?

I’ve actually considered writing a romance novel myself. I think I got about 30 words into it before I felt a horrible shudder … I felt gross doing it. The style didn’t suit me at all. I would probably suit chick-lit better.

A version of “Harlequin girl” published in the print version of Dose magazine, April 11, 2005 and is shown below. More book and author pieces are here.

Published in Dose magazine, April 11, 2005.