One of the things I enjoyed most about the essays of Michelle Sagara and Elizabeth Vail on the alpha and beta heroes in Romance was the range of comments and interpretations of both heroic types. How could the same type produce so many different, and often conflicting, ideas of what ... more >
These two pieces were originally published in 2011. The first, by Jane, is on general reader consent, and the second, by Robin, is on reader consent and sexual force in Romance. The reader consent issue was raised last week on Twitter, and we figured it might be time to re-run these ... more >
As some of you may know, Riptide author Amelia Gormley recently stirred some controversy on her blog regarding book warnings. Her dubcon f**ck or die m/m erotica (or erotic Romance, depending on your confidence in publisher tagging), Strain, is the specific subject of her post, in which she argues a ... more >
There was much discussion this past week about critiquing and policing in online communities. Robin’s post last week kicked off a lively discussion in the comments and on Twitter, and I started to see examples of the tension she highlighted in post throughout the week, here at Dear Author and ... more >
A while back I was listening to an interview on Hard Talk, the BBC World Service interview show. The host was talking with the director of a new film version of Great Expectations. When pushed, the director said his movie was better than the classic David Lean version even though ... more >
It is commonly accepted wisdom that controversy sells books. Many people believe that negative reviews can sell books. But what we talk about less is how whether and what the effect might be of this controversial discourse on the genre itself, especially in cases where a lot of the controversy ... more >