we really devolved as a society when we stopped using fully painted pictures on romance novels and started using cheap photoshop instead
case in point
this is a Hell of a downgrade
worst crime capitalism ever committed was eliminating Horny Oil Painter as a viable career option.
So great news actually the horny oil painter style is starting to make a comeback with millennials who’re into adult romance novels, but not in the way you expect!
She’s a “Beast” with a disability, and he’s a hot playboy detective who’s keeping her under witness protection.
Name That Trope:
Beauty & the Beast Retelling/Reimagining
“Be My Mistress, Never Mind; Be My Guest!”
Sasstacular witty heroine with a tortured past
Carefree sexy hero with epic horny pants
Class divide set among the working class
Historical Not In A Ballroom
Forced proximity via temporary housemates
What part made you fangirl squeal:
SO MANY BATB REFERENCES! A “short & stout” (teapot nursery rhyme, anyone?) housekeeper! The wardrobe shout outs! The snowball fight!
Every scene where Abigail clapped back at Michael! I lost count of the times this super witty, super smart chick verbally slayed his ass for dinner.
The 647 times this book emotionally fucked me up with a sentence or paragraph. Socially conscious woke shade throwing! Poignant pain poetically prosed! This book got it all, y'all.
When Abigail walked up to Michael butt-ass nude & all dude could say was “I, ah, I did not, ah, naked.”
Favorite Character:
Oh for sure, Abigail! Her emotional narrative was way more hard-hitting than Michael’s.
While both are witty and engaging characters, your heart feels most for our heroine. That’s partly ‘cause gal is a tough survivor, & partly because she’s heartbreaking.
How smexy was the smex?
HOT…but brief. The sex has DAAAAAMN good dialogue, but the scenes don’t last long. And yet!
We got a “Hero Catches Heroine Masturbating” scene, and for that alone the Pound Town deserves my love! Female self-pleasure AND a hero who gets a jealous, who-sexing-my-crush Rage Boner which turns into a Boner Boner? Yes, bless!
Throw in Michael’s “Say my name or I won’t let you come” bed talk, and I fangirled til I couldn’t fangirl anymore.
Whose Line Is It Anyway:
Michael:If you continue to talk like that, I shan’t be responsible for my actions.
Abigail: Men of your ilk never are.
*****
“She walked until her knees began to throb, and then she walked some more, welcoming the ache. Pain was a language she understood. Pain spoke in stops and starts, in the sudden unexpected stab, in the unnatural twist of a joint. Pain did not make false promises, nor give false hope. In its unpredictable, selfish nature, pain became a friend she could trust. There was no use making plans. Pain would creep in at the slightest provocation, without warning or due course. To win against pain, she simply must exist. Every waking moment was a victory.”
*****
Michael: You’ve as much right as any man to seek your pleasure. Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.
Abigail: An entire society cannot be wrong.
Michael: It most certainly can.
Got any bitching to do?
Sadly, there were a couple police policing scenes that made me yawn.
And, infuriatingly enough, this book pulled the Virginal Sex Pain game! THIS IS NOT A THING, PEOPLE! For the last time, the hymen doesn’t work like that. If a healthy woman’s first time having sex hurts, then she’s either not aroused enough OR she’s not relaxed enough.
Translation? That means hero sucks at sex!
Visually Depict Yo Book Feels:
Famous last words:
Despite its occasional lulls, overall the book was a good read!
Sure, the heroine’s “beastly attributes” felt less significant than most batB retellings. But! I can see what the author was trying to do within the scope of the story. And yeah, I side-eyed the crap out of this couple’s first sex scene. But! Their intimacy was amazingly beautiful and equally intense.
Guys, this historical romance took us out of the ballroom! It gave us a working class romance that explores classism, poverty, & survival. The writing was art, the characters were real, & the romance was gorgeous. GOOD READ WAS GOOD!
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For a more in depth, LOL-fest discussion on romance novels, HERE BE MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL!
Some time ago I was commissioned by the delightful Elin Gregory to draw the characters of her equally delightful Eleventh Hour, Briars and Miles/Millie. If you want to read a wonderful and unusual 1920s queer british spy romp romance between a badass spy and a charming non-binary linguist, this is the book for you.
Eleventh Hour has:
undercover fake marrieds!
Cool Spy Stuff
Tol snarky falls in love with smol snarky
They go on a date to see the movie Wings and marvel at that famous gay kiss (wow im so soft)
Theres a scene where Briars, the hardened spy and also a war vet, has to calm down a baby and he freaks out and says “sorry old man”. To a baby. That hes holding
a german best frenemy spy who turns up even more in the second book and I love him so much
just. real good Gender Stuff when it comes to Miles and his gender presentation
Please go put money in Elin Gregory’s pocket and also make a fandom for this series
My favorite ladies from Proper English by KJ Charles! If you want to read a wonderful f/f edwardian murder mystery, read this book, its one of my favorites
My first traditional art in about 2 years? 3? My new years resolution is to do more trad art, so here’s the first one! Georgie, Lawrence and their son Simon from The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian, a book I adore with all of my heart that you should all read (pls)
It’s INSANE to me how controversial romance novels are. Romance novels. Like, being openly a fan of them immediately opens you up to people constantly coming at you like “but don’t you think it’s ~limiting- and ~juvenile~ to have a genre of books with happy endings for women?”
Like.
No?
Why is it such a big deal to want to read stories where women have sex and then don’t die at the end? Jesus Christ.
Why is the concept of female characters being happy seen as less creative than female characters suffering? (Trust me, creating a world where women win in the end takes a lot more creativity and artistic vision lmfao)
Anyway, literary bros will pry my romance novels with their happy endings from my cold dead fingers.
Or die in the very beginning of the book. But no one calls out James Patterson for writing another formulaic thriller in which a woman is horrifically killed after getting laid and then some man solves her murder. Every. Damn. Time.
But hey, those romance novels where women get happy endings are so limiting, eh?
Real talk: realizing how common it is for female characters to be punished for on-the-page sex with death was a big part of my embracing the romance genre. Once I noticed it I couldn’t unnotice it. It’s everywhere. A woman having sex in literature or non-romance genre fiction is the literary equivalent of a red shirt on Star Trek.
It’s not just the sex thing, though that’s a key element. It’s that, in romance novels, the heroine gets to be cared for the way she normally would care for everyone else. It’s wish fulfillment in that her romantic partner will do emotional labor, spend a great deal of time thinking about her, or sacrifice his desires or fortune or reputation to be with her, or spend days nursing her back to health, or risking his life to save hers. In romance novels, you’ll find men taking care of children, talking about their feelings, putting effort into their appearance—even if they are adorably bad at it. Watch how many romance novel protagonists fall in love with a man who happens to be rich or handsome, but she didn’t give in until his behavior changed and he starts mentoring her, or providing for her, or being gentle toward her, nourishing her, listening to her, appreciating her… I suspect romance novels are looked down upon not for being juvenile formulaic “beach reads” but because they paint a fantasy world that leaves men feeling uncomfortable or even emasculated. But whether you’re a Midwest housewife or a big city CEO, women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty. Great sex they don’t have to die for is also a huge bonus, but the *romance* part of the novel is genuinely more about the woman being appreciated (for her beauty or spunk or intelligence at first, and then for all of her by the end).
“women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected to love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty.”
THANK YOU.
According to the website smartbitchestrashybooks, which analyzes romance novels to a great degree, one common element of the average romance novel is what they call the grovel. That is, there’s a turning point near the climax of the book where the leading man says, in effect, “I hurt you. I had my reasons, but they don’t make it right. I am devastated that I hurt you, and I will do whatever it takes to make it okay again. Leaving you is completely on the table even though I find the prospect horrific.”
And that’s a very important fantasy. To have your feelings, your pain, be made so absolutely central to the narrative, to someone else’s world. You could call it a power fantasy, but I don’t think that’s exactly right. It’s a significance fantasy. A romance story is a story in which the woman is the most significant damn thing in the book.
And when you think of it like that, you realize why some people are really, really threatened by it.
I came across a blog post the other day that discussed how to write emotion—a subject not new to us—but explained in a new way. I don’t like to regurgitate information if someone blogged it better. So I had to share.
“To convey an emotion, you can’t just show the beginning point. You can’t just show the endpoint either. Neither one is enough on its own.
The reason is clear: emotion is an arc, not a moment. It begins, builds, and eventually culminates. Emotion always comes in the context of what has gone before, and as a sequence.
He uses movie still frames to show what he means.
I love this way of crafting emotion, because it’s something I apply in my developmental editing work. And it’s a HUGE part of crafting romance novels, where emotional journeys, dark pasts, present obstacles, and love make up the story arc.
Arcs within arcs. This isn’t a bad acid trip.
As I help authors straighten out the big picture of their story, I also get into the weeds, pulling out an example and showing authors how they can clarify and tighten emotional sequences.
Why did the heroine lash out at the hero? This might seem out of character, but we can backtrack and make it work.
Maybe she carried feelings of upset from the previous scene when she parted with her mother. (Reasoning)
Maybe these feelings were churning in her during the drive. (Build up)
Then as she climbs the steps to the hero’s door, her foot knocks over the flower pot on the stoop. It breaks. And inside, so does the heroine. (Trigger)
When the hero answers his door—taking just a little too long—she lashes out at him. (Explosion)
If we just read the part where she explodes, without showing the thread, the moment would feel jarring or confusing. We need to layer in details that connect to each other and help readers understand. And paint a fuller picture of what’s happening to the character on the outside and on the inside.
It’s small stuff, but it’s crucial to orchestrating an emotional arc just right. Incrementally.
One of the lessons I’ve learned over the years in blogging is not to write about a subject if someone already wrote it better. It’s like that time I re-told a joke, except I fudged the ending and didn’t do it justice at all. (And for the first time, you hear what polite laughter sounds like.)
“The beginning is important because if the start of the story is lousy, the reader won’t keep reading. The ending is more important because If a writer doesn’t deliver at the story climax, the reader will be frustrated and disappointed, and that’s what she’ll remember most about the story. It’s actually better that a reader NOT read a book than read an unsatisfying book.”
I ramble about story beginningsandkeeping readers hookedbecauseI read a lot of manuscripts that have slow, confusing, or clunky beginnings, where the author seemed to be doing a lot of throat clearing. (Like I did over the weekend at a karaoke bar, singing in front of a bunch of drunken strangers. Ahem. AHEM.)
Beginnings are difficult to nail and often get rewritten the most. You have a ton of story setup to get through in a short amount of time to keep readers hooked. The action, the setting, the initial disturbance, the goals, character sympathy. And more.
But then we realize the beginning is only the second most important part.
When I discard a book without finishing, I feel like I disappointed the author, or the author disappointed me, or maybe I just wasn’t the target reader. I’m pricked with a touch of guilt.
But this is a small, quiet moment compared to full-on frustration over a story ending that didn’t deliver.
Sometimes it’s not just one book that disappointed us, but a series. Also known as The Dreaded Trilogy Curse. When you’ve invested time in a series that flops in the last, most anticipated installment. Emotions run even higher. Like hanging out with a guy all summer only to realize he has a long-distance girlfriend he failed to mention until the end. That jerk.
Your time was wasted. But more importantly, your heart feels toyed with.
That’s the weird, magical thing about books. When an author begins a story, she’s making a promise to readers. And she has to make good on that promise with her ending.
It’s a lot of pressure. Here’s a paper bag to breathe into.
Luckily, authors aren’t alone. There are plenty of outlets and resources to get feedback, from beta readers, to writing buddies, to my Quickie Consulting service. In thirty minutes to an hour, my authors walk away with a lot more inspiration and encouragement to finish their draft and get their ending just right.
So, it turns out that DNF isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, reader or writer. The ending is, in fact, the most important thing. Ever.
