I’ve got a new post up at Heroes and Heartbreakers: Just a Gigolo…Romance Hero?
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Out of curiosity, I recently did a search on the phrase “romance novels.” This was prompted by a conversation I had with Magdalen of Promantica, who’d recently heard the term “Harlequin romances” used as a generic disparaging term. So I went on an internet search to see what I could see, eavesdropping, as it were.
1. And, well, I am a girl, and I can’t always read deep, noble, thoughtful books, so I have my fair share of fluffy romance novels under my belt, too..
2. We were looking for Water for Elephants and Something Borrowed but couldn’t find either. Ugh! So we ended up getting The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks, I’m such a sucker for romance novels.
3. Jude writes in a way that isn’t cheesy or classic romance novels where it’s like reading porn, it’s just her telling a story of two people falling in love. Much like that ding-dong Nicholas Sparks, except that instead of people dying at the end, people live happily ever after.
4. Romance novels….Stop shaking your head like those aren’t GIRL PORN….IT’S GIRL PORN, like it or not!!!….PLUS, “ROMANCE” is in the title EVEN!!!! If you boys were all romantic like that, no girl would ever say “No”….EVER! Be gentle and sweet to her like these guys are and pretend that you give a sh!t what shade her lipstick is and how her hair flows in the beaming sunlight strand by strand until it gently rests upon her flawless bare shoulder……YUP, a guaranteed GOOD NIGHT.
5. Generally, I don’t look at my penchant for reading romance as a political or feminist statement—I simply look at it as a damn fun read that gives me a perfect mini-vacation from life. But when I consider the fact that romance, more than any other genre that I can think of, works to accommodate all the different tastes and comfort levels of its readers, I realize that by doing so, the genre embraces the many differences that make this world so interesting and diverse, and damn if that isn’t pretty frickin’ empowering…and kinda sexy.
About Victoria Janssen
Victoria Janssen [she, her] currently writes cozy space opera for
Kalikoi. The novella series A Place of Refuge begins with
Finding Refuge:
Telepathic warrior Talia Avi, genius engineer Miki Boudreaux, and augmented soldier Faigin Balfour fought the fascist Federated Colonies for ten years, following the charismatic dissenter Jon Churchill. Then Jon disappeared, Talia was thought dead, and Miki and Faigin struggled to take Jon’s place and stay alive. When the FC is unexpectedly upended, Talia is reunited with her friends and they are given sanctuary on the enigmatic planet Refuge. The trio of former guerillas strive to recover from lifetimes of trauma, build new lives on a planet with endless horizons, and forge tender new connections with each other.
