by hollandrae | Jul 27, 2020 | Characters, Harry Potter, Heroines, Humor, Industry, Inspiration, Musings, My Books, Reading, Regency, Research, Romance Novels
“What’s my problem, Mila?” he asked, all the more intimidating and enticing for the lowness of his voice. “What’s my problem, tell me. I want to know.” The above quote is from my current work in progress, In My Sights, and though it doesn’t squarely follow the...
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 | Jun 1, 2020 | Characters, Heroines, Industry, Inspiration, Reading, Romance Novels, RWA, Uncategorized, Women, Women's Rights
I initially wrote this piece almost two years ago and, while a lot has changed in romance and in politics, far too much remains the same. I am no longer a member of the Romance Writers of America community, which saddens me deeply, but I am working to create more...
by hollandrae | Apr 27, 2020 | Art, Editing, Heroes, Heroines, Industry, Musings, My Books, Reading, Research, Romance Novels
When the Twilight series hit its zenith of popularity, vampire stories, love triangle stories, and YA fantasy flooded the market. After the success of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, dystopian fiction with young, often female, protagonists, became inescapable in...
by hollandrae | Jan 29, 2020 | Characters, Editing, Industry, Inspiration, Musings, My Books, Reading, Research
Easy reading is damn hard writing. – Nathaniel Hawthorne From the outside, writing doesn’t look too hard. After all, I spent eight to ten hours a day on my computer, doing the thing I love most in the world. What could be difficult about that? I get to...
by hollandrae | Jan 22, 2020 | Characters, Heroines, Musings, My Books, Reading, Research, Romance Novels, RWA, Statistics, Women, Women's Rights
There are some pretty distinct rules that separate romance novels from every other genre, including genres with love stories. The most obvious of which is the HEA, The Happily Ever After, where the reader is left with a sense that, not only is everything okay right...
