Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

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I’m feeling the paranormal/fantasy fatigue. What are you feeling?

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. Before I downloaded it, I googled the show and saw that David Boreantz said that what made the show were its relationships
“For me, I’ve always maintained that the show was the [Booth-Bones] relationship, maintained that the show was about the characters and I maintained that the show is about the two of us learning through the crimes and that journey that we take,” he said. “That, to me, is the most important part.”
After watching the first episode, I agree. The characterization of Bones was forced in places (the ‘I don’t know what that means’ meme got a bit tiresome). The mystery was resolved in about two seconds. I couldn’t decide if I liked the eccentricities of the secondary characters or whether their quirkiness fell under “trying to hard.” …

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.” Hello, MSNBC, the 80s called and they want George Michael and your poll writers back. See, bodice rippers don’t identify romance books anymore. It’s man titty. Can you get that right? Let’s have culturally relevant insults. It works better, you look smarter and it makes it harder for us to make fun of you.

And perhaps you haven’t heard yet, but millions of women spend nearly a billion dollars on romance books each year which means you are pissing off a huge segment of your viewership. Rock on with your bad, deluded, out of touch selves.

Links to other bloggers who think you are as stupid as I do:

Smart Bitches (with new poll)
Barbara Vey’s blog with an alternate list of poll answers

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 on the love relationship of individuals and results in an uplifting ending for the characters involved in the love relationship.

My definition? A book that contains a love story and ends with the promise of happily ever after.

Robin’s argument is that if the more widely accepted definition was not one that included a HEA, that the ending of books would be more satisfying.

My argument is that authors need not limit themselves by the genre definition as expressed by the readers. Meaning, that if an author is crafting her books to be most reader friendly (depending on whom the reader is), then that is her issue and not one reliant on the genre definition. I read JR Ward’s recent book, “Lover Unbound”, as an answer to her fans, at least a certain segment of her fans. …

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 me your favorite mystery/romantic suspense and then give me your best recommendation of one that doesn’t have alot of sex. Make sure that it is a romance, not a cross over (like Iris Johansen).