Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

In a genre full of nice, nurturing, morally upright, and unflinchingly kind heroines, I find myself drawn more and more to the somewhat unlikeable heroine. Not the “bad girl,” per se, nor the hopelessly complicated and in need of rescue woman, but the female protagonist with an edge to her, the woman whose traits women [...]

Value, value, value. That seems to have become one of those buzzwords invoked in defense of corporate publishing’s status quo. But what is value, exactly?
Of the “agency model,” Hatchette CEO David Young has said, “It allows Hachette to make pricing decisions that are rational and reflect the value of our authors’ works.” Harper Collins CEO [...]

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Straight off the top of your head, do you think that authors have any ethical or moral responsibilities beyond the book?
I’m guessing that the vast majority of you answered this question the same way I did for a long time, with a fully articulated, deeply resounding NO.
As I said, this [...]

Dear Readers:
It has been five years since we’ve had a new Laura Kinsale book to read, and Lessons in French is quite a departure from her last book, Shadowheart.
Callie, or more properly, Lady Callista Taillefaire, is a 27-year old thrice-jilted heiress who wants nothing more than to live in relative peace – and raise her [...]

Dear Ms. O’Reilly:
I realized when I started reading Midnight Resolutions that I have grown somewhat complacent with my expectations regarding your books. I was prepared for the very independent heroine, and the lust-struck good guy hero, and the witty banter between them. What I wasn’t expecting, and what I found both compelling and problematic about [...]

In my last piece, Morality and Romance, I suggested that the genre reflects a historically entrenched double standard around female sexuality, namely that what is largely tolerated or even embraced in male protagonists – rich and varied sexual experience – is disparaged in female protagonists. So-called Dukes of Slut can be heroic, but not Duchesses [...]

Dear Ms. Archer and Ms. D’Arc:
When Zoe Archer offered ARC copies of your new two-novella book, Half Past Dead on Twitter, I enthusiastically requested one, with more than a little curiosity about how zombies would work in Romance. I would have to read substantially more books to fully quench that curiosity, but your novellas gave [...]