Feb 28 2012
Remember in the movie Say Anything when Lloyd Dobbler, broken-hearted that Diane Court had ended their relationship, stood outside her window while she was napping blasting Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes? Rather than thinking of this as creepy, stalkerish behavior, my teenage heart swooned. Imagine, a boy who will do anything to win your love. [...]
Feb 15 2012
From reader Shula is this fantastic article about romances at The Awl. According to the reader, “The Awl is one of a quartet of blogs (think Gawker media) that also includes The Hairpin, a ladyblog. What I thought particularly interesting was that instead of posting the article there, where one might assume something written by [...]
Jan 3 2012
Maili suggested I do a prediction of the 2012 romance genre, but those books have already been bought, mostly. Here’s what I would like to see: More diversity, not just in the characters, but in the settings. I’m iffy on wanting more steampunk. Too many people slap an iron bustle in a book and throw [...]
Dec 13 2011
There are four types of romances as it pertains to villains: Romances with no villains. The redeemable villain The domestic villain The international villain The straight contemporary and the straight historical rarely have villains. The story is propelled primarily by the main characters and their romance. Paranormals, Science Fiction romance, and urban fantasy books [...]
Nov 22 2011
Heroines in romance have great latitude. They can be rich and very poor. They can be successful and a failiure. They can be pretty, dumpy, funny, dour. They are not all extracted from the same hard body mold like the hero. The heroine’s own agency can provide a source of conflict for the romance. For [...]
Oct 10 2011
USA Today launched a blog devoted to romances. Huzzah! Author Joyce Lamb, a copy editor for the paper and author of romantic suspenses published by Berkley, heads up the blog. Mandi S is one of the reviewers. Her blog is here. Other readers and authors will be contributing. It’s great to see positive coverage of [...]
Jun 9 2011
I was contacted last week about a program called “The Fresh Air Fund”. The program sets up host families for children in need. You can check out more at this link. **** Jon L is the creator of a new blog which uses the Amazon API to try and create lists of new releases and [...]
Nov 10 2009
see more Lolcats and funny pictures There is not a more common hero archetype in historical romance than the “rake”. In my early days of reading, I always viewed the “rake” as a sign of virility of the hero. In romance novels, the women titter about the rake’s scandalous reputation while parading their young in [...]
Sep 26 2009
In today’s First Page, Laura Kinsale brought up a question in the comments regarding unfamiliar terms in a story. I have a question, as a writer, about one of the comments. This isn’t a loaded question, or any sort of commentary on this excerpt itself, it’s input for me. DS said I had to look [...]
Aug 11 2009
see more Lolcats and funny pictures There are passages in books that are so memorable that you need only say a few descriptive words and the reader knows exactly what book you are talking about. These are scenes that I don’t think could be duplicated by the same author or even other authors without invoking [...]
Jun 24 2008
more cat pictures I just watched the first episode of Bones which I downloaded from iTunes. I’d been thinking about watching it for some time and was holed up in the basement working on a project and thought that running the show while I was working would be a great way to pass some time. [...]
Jun 18 2008
MSNBC decided to run a poll about romance novels in conjunction with its feature of fiction writer Danielle Steele. Why MSNBC jumps from Danielle Steele to romance, I’ll never know but it just goes to show how culturally illiterate the MSNBC poll writers are. Apparently MSNBC believes that romance books are still called “bodice rippers.” [...]
Sep 18 2007
Some readers have argued in the comments at Smart Bitches that the romance genre definition does not include a happy ever after. I had a long and somewhat contentious debate with Robin over the definition of romance. Her argument is that the academic definition of the genre is that romance is a story that focuses [...]
Oct 18 2006
I have been challenged by a male online reader who has been questioning of the romance genre to find the following: Does there exist such a thing as a mystery or suspense romance that doesn’t have a lot of sensual sexual physical or erotic stuff going on? Help me make a convert here. First, give [...]
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