‘If the story brought tears to our eyes . . . it was accepted.’ : Love and Romance, From the Heart and in Paperback

Jerry Biederman and I spent a full minute and a half establishing that, despite our shared last name, we don’t also share an aunt in Brooklyn or a second cousin in Chicago. Nor am I related to his uncle, best-selling author Irving Wallace. That out of the way, we got down to business.

The business was romance. More properly, the business was the business of romance.

I always think about that this time of year, when long-stemmed roses are more expensive than abalone. With apologies to Tina Turner, who doesn’t strike me as the Valentine’s Day type, I know what love has to do with it. But where do inferior champagne and heart-shaped ravioli come in? And what about Jerry Biederman?

Biederman is a 28-year-old writer who lives in Tarzana. His third book, called “My First Real Romance,” is being published today. Actually, the book--a collection of real-life love stories by 20 well-known romance writers--first came out late last year in hard cover. Today the paperback version is being released, an event as uncalculated as artificial insemination.

Publisher Stein & Day seems to believe that lovers and others will celebrate Feb. 14 by snapping up copies of “My First Real Romance” (co-authored by Tom Silberkleit) instead of investing heavily in overdressed chocolates. The first printing is 70,000 copies, a house record, Biederman reports happily.

Stein & Day may be onto something.

“My First Real Romance” is unblushingly pitched to the estimated 22 million people who regularly read romance novels. We can call these readers something else, if only to be more specific. We can call them women. Because the people who salivate when they see a new Harlequin title on the supermarket rack know things about sex discrimination and tuna-noodle casserole that the average American male has never dreamed of.

I can’t fully fathom romance readers, despite our common gender. They are infinitely more tolerant of the word “rapture” than I am. And they linger longer than the rest of us care to over stories in which the said rapture is described in protracted but nonspecific accounts of urgent thrusting and breathless melting. But popular romance writers such as Alice Morgan, whose heroines have been known to do more than melt, are apparent soul sisters to their readers.

Biederman figures there are 22 million people out there who will want to know how contributor Morgan met the real-life husband of 33 years she describes as “tall, dark, and then some” and why they got married on television in a hospital.

“If the story brought tears to our eyes at one point, it was accepted,” Biederman says of how he judged the manuscripts he had solicited.

The polite young author (he remembers the plate of chocolate cookies for the visiting columnist that so many forget) is unashamed of having created a book in a businesslike fashion, from a successfully pitched concept, even if he didn’t actually write it the old-fashioned way. “I am very in tune with what is commercial,” he says.

His Uncle Irving (his mother’s brother) helped make him that way. Wallace sat with him and patiently helped him prioritize his beginner’s list of book ideas. Wallace also got him one of the best literary agents in New York. “Of course,” Biederman reminds, “this agent feels very comfortable rejecting a project no matter who you are.”

Biederman recently wrote his first short story. To his delight, his uncle, who had never doubted that Biederman would make it with or without literary talent, was impressed.

“He told my mother, ‘This kid can write.’ I think no one knew that before because of the format of my previous books.”

Biederman says he is every bit as romantic as his book and its audience.

Indeed, one former girlfriend found him too romantic. “It’s not fun enough with all these bottles of champagne and poems and things,” she whined. She was very young, Biederman says in the silly woman’s defense. “I think she still wanted to go out with the gang to the Westside.”

His present passion has a single flaw, he says. “The way we feel about each other deserves a more spectacular introduction.” They met, it seems, at Cal State Northridge. That isn’t Bali by moonlight, true, but rapture is rapture wherever you find it.

And, whatever you call it, it beats the hell out of heart-shaped ravioli.