Girl on girl hate has become a ubiquitous theme in romantic comedies, novels, television shows and nearly anything catering to the pre-teen, thus creating a never ending cycle of vicious gossip, bullying and tormenting. Modern romance fights that tide.
I cannot say I’ve ever read a romance novel where the heroine sat around twiddling her thumbs waiting for a two-dimensional character with no name, (looking you, Prince Charming... ) to give her a new life.
Will they or won’t they – it’s the most important, infuriating question of every romance novel. Will they give into their desire now, in the dark corners of the library? How about now, in the hidden coves of the rose gardens? When will they finally succumb to what they both desire most?
Why aren’t these books marketed as romance novels and why do so many stories have love-story plots or subplots but scoff at the ones that do so intentionally?
Sometimes I write about important things. This isn’t one of those times. This is one of those times where I stomp my feet and beat my chest and demand that our alpha He-Men are also capable polyglots with an eye for Baroque art and a surprisingly vast knowledge of the erotic language in the Decameron.
Over the course of my evolving love for the romance genre, and my need to read more to write more, I have discovered many genres that I would never have known I loved, had it not been by chance or happy accident. Here are just a few:
Romance is for the women of the world who don’t get to hear their stories told nearly enough. It’s for all people whose stories are silenced, it’s a beacon of hope and optimism when things seem really, really bad.
Just because the writer, reader and general populous know how the book is going to end doesn’t mean it’s not a book worth reading – or writing. In fact, I have discovered that writing the books with a required ending is more challenging than writing ones without.
But the one thing that a book must have to count as a romance novel at all is either a Happily Ever After or Happily For Now. The reader goes into the story knowing that everything is going to turn out all right in the end, better than all right, no matter how dire the circumstances may seem.
I got to sit down with my darling friend Elizabeth to chat Nicole Kidman, the Underground Railroad and her new release, Bootleg Love Affair!
Holland Rae, Writer 