Oct 11 2011
I’ve been futzing with this article for a couple of months and it’s not working out. I told myself to finish it and publish it and it accidentally went up last week. I guess that is a sign. I think the problem that I have with the subject is that I don’t have any real [...]
Oct 4 2011
During the Mistorical discussion, some asked why we didn’t point out errors or miscues in contemporary romances.Lynn S even gave us a good name for it: contemporroneous. To the extent that we know them, I think that we do. I’ve been pretty scathing, in fact, about books featuring sports characters where I didn’t agree with [...]
Sep 27 2011
I was reading Cecilia Grant’s blurb for her June 2012 book and the blurb makes it clear that the story is about gambling. Gambling plots have a long history in romance and in popular culture. Card playing is not viewed as a vice but rather an activity at which any decent hero of distinction excels [...]
Sep 13 2011
Dreamspinner Press had five shorts I was interested in this week, so I thought I’d do lightning reviews of them. And then I ended up ranting at the end of the reviews, ending up more like an Opinion Letter than anything else. Russian Roulette by Alex Alder: Jacob teaches martial art fighting in…somewhere in Texas. [...]
Sep 6 2011
First I want to formally introduce our newest tag at Dear Author: mistorical. Now tags don’t generally get such an officious welcome, but this one, in particular, might be a wee bit controversial, as it means, quite literally, “mistaken historical.” In other words, it’s the tag we’re now going to be using to describe [...]
Aug 30 2011
Back in April, I had an exchange with poster Liza Lester in response to Janine’s review of Petals and Thorns. Liza wrote: But it occurred to me that if the forced seduction were presented as (rather mild, actually) BDSM erotica, if it were explicitly a game, or limited to a scene, I would have no [...]
Aug 23 2011
In romance, the main characters are referred to as Hero and Heroine. The terms are formed from the base word, hero. The term “hero” in modern vernacular refers to someone who is “of distinguished courage or ability, admired for brave deeds and noble qualities.” In the romance genre, there are often good guys and bad [...]
Aug 9 2011
I’m not sure how I came across this article about Olivia Wilde. I’m not a fan of hers and wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a pretty actress line up. But in an interview with Marie Claire, Wilde spoke about her divorce. “I don’t think love should be work,” she said. She acknowledged [...]
Aug 2 2011
Janet/Robin’s post on authorial intrusion into the text generated a very lively discussion. I was a little surprised, though, that one point of Robin’s was not picked up more: her careful distinction between the author as a person and the authorial persona. Perhaps this is because we have conditioned ourselves not to read disclaimers: [...]
Jul 26 2011
Amnesia is one of the most reviled of romance tropes, right up there with secret babies, but it’s also immensely popular. There are few writers with long careers who fail to tackle it at some point. And why not? It delivers plots rich in conflict, deception, forgiveness–and secret babies. I thought I’d read a lot [...]
Jul 12 2011
I’m not certain when the first epilogue appeared in romance. You can’t blame it on the category books because I’ve read hundreds of old time categories and epilogues were far rarer in the “olden days.” I think, but don’t know for a fact, that the epilogue became de rigeur in single title books. Back in [...]
Jul 5 2011
Courtship is traditionally defined as the period of dating before marriage. One of the things I love about romance books is the courtship. The meet cute (or just the meet), the stirrings of new feelings, and prolonged tension between a couple as their desire for each other mounts are all elements that I love to [...]
Jun 28 2011
I tend to read for three things: a visceral response, a delightful and interesting use of language, and character. While genre fiction often relies on plot rather than prose to compel the reader forward, I firmly believe that the best plots are rooted in character. Even if the plot of the novel is a quest [...]
Jun 21 2011
In 2009, the Lambda Literary Fund changed the criteria for entries to their literary awards. Rather than reward great books with LGBT content, the Lammies now require LGBT authorship as well: “it should be noted that the Lambda Literary Awards are based principally on the LGBT content, the sexual orientation of the author, and the literary [...]
Jun 14 2011
Last month, Sunita sent me a link to a book inspired by a schoolteacher in Paris named Daniel Pennac. Pennac had created a readers’ list of rights to encourage young people to read. This list was combined with illustrations by Quentin Blake and then published. The U.S. version has only black and white illustrations, but [...]
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