by hollandrae | Jul 6, 2020 | Beauty, Characters, Heroines, Industry, Inspiration, Musings, Reading, Romance Novels, Women's Rights
I think there was a time when pop culture and mass media realized that women could be mean. They discovered the secret like it was the Holy Grail and turned it into a trope that would never die. The Mean Girl. The Villainess. The Bitch. The Witch. The Slut. The Prude....
by hollandrae | Jul 2, 2020 | Characters, Heroes, Heroines, Industry, Intersectional Feminism, Musings, My Books, Reviews, Romance Novels, Women, Women's Rights
I know, it sounds dirty. But DNF stands for ‘Did Not Finish’ and I don’t do it often. In fact, I didn’t even do it while I was reading this most recent book, by a famous, renowned romance novelist, whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past, but whose latest release is, in...
by hollandrae | Jun 22, 2020 | Characters, Industry, Inspiration, My Books, Research, Romance Novels
Sometimes, the beginning is the easy part. In fact, sometimes it’s the only part I know. Story inspiration comes to me in myriad ways, snippets of dialogue, a flash of a setting, a character’s tragic backstory. Sometimes it is wide brushes of character arc and plot,...
by hollandrae | Jun 15, 2020 | Characters, Heroes, Heroines, Industry, Musings, Regency, Romance Novels, Women, Women's Rights, Writing
Yes, I’m defending romance novels again. But it’s a little different this time, I swear! (I hope.) See, recently I’ve been coercing my new neighbor into reading romance novels. She’s been alive for more than three decades and she’s never enjoyed a single romance novel...
by hollandrae | Jun 8, 2020 | Industry, Intersectional Feminism, Musings, Research, Romance Novels, Women, Women's Rights
This panel was hosted in summer of 2018, before I moved to Nashville. I briefly considered making edits to this post, but the truth is that more remains the same than has changed in these years of fighting for equal representation, opportunity, and support, and so I...