I have a weakness for gothic romances. I used to love them when I was in high school. Back then, they were published as slender paperbacks featuring a girl in a nightgown, her hair whipping behind her. She was usually leaning into the wind at an odd angle, turning around to stare back at the huge house behind her, looming like a big, huge….um…phallic symbol.
What those books did brilliantly was bring into play the creepiness that accompanies a truly alpha male. The truth is that most American women love to read about Christine Feehan’s and J.R. Ward’s wounded warriors, but […]
November 1, 2005 – 1:18 pm
You know when you’ve had a really miserable day? There’s a million reasons why this can happen, covering everything from love to children, work and money. Well, I was having one. It was so bad that I felt as if misery were buzzing at the corner of my ears like background noise all day long. I spent the day at the university talking to graduate students (I’m Director of Graduate Studies at the moment) and eating too much. Then I dragged myself home through Penn Station, New York, only to miss my train and find that I had thirty minutes […]
September 1, 2005 – 1:31 pm
I’m tired of perfect heroines. Surely I’m not the only one? I love romance; I really do. But if there’s one thing I don’t like about it (other than the manifest truth that my marriage doesn’t seem as perfect as the ones I create in fiction), it’s all these perfect women. Perfect teeth. Perfect waists. Perfects breasts — that goes without saying. I know there are other readers out there like me, because I figure that’s where the popularity of chick lit really came from: Bridget’s weight problems and her unsexy underwear. But these days I’m reading a lot of […]
My Surrender
by Connie Brockway
This is along the lines of a eulogy, because Connie’s going over to the Dark Side. Yep, she’s going to contemporary - and not even romance. She’ll be writing diva lit, or whatever the newest term is that describes books about women over twenty. So… My Surrender is a swan song by one of the greatest writers of historical romance ever.
She’s a good friend, so I twisted her arm while saying mean things about traitors and turn-coats, and it all paid off. Lots of insider info. My Surrender is Connie’s nod to The Count of Monte Cristo. […]
First the romance:
Close to You,
by Christina Dodd. I write in series, meaning that I have a continuing story arc. But my continuing stories tend to be less than earth-shaking - along the lines of “what sex is Esme’s baby?” Nobody’s holding their breath. Christina’s linked suspense novels are of a different caliber. I remember reading the first one in this series and begging Christina to tell me who killed Hope’s parents. Would she tell? Nope. I suspected that she didn’t really know… after all, don’t you think that suspense authors must sometimes set up these elaborate killer schemes without […]
