Making rakes from real men
I don’t know about the rest of you historical writers out there, but there are times when I am riveted with jealousy for contemporary writers—mostly when I’m reading a contemporary and the hero speaks. It’s so much easier to do a man in “regular” speech than it is in “Regency-speak.” Here’s an example. I happen to adore MaryJanice Davidson’s books, [...]
My first year published
Remember how much you longed to be a teenager? When I was unpublished, the published state looked just as glorious as the magic year 13 does to an 11-year-old girl. I had no problem visualizing myself signing my name with a flourish and meeting my editor at fancy New York lunches. But First Years are often not exactly as one [...]
The National Book Festival
The Library of Congress invited Eloisa James to talk at the 2012 National Book Festival, making her the first romance author to speak at the festival. She claims that genre fiction transforms individual lives by resonating with reader emotions. We hope you enjoy the following selections! What lessons have you learned from reading romances or other genre novels? If you [...]
Feminist romance
A professor of mine once said that all literary critics are either lumpers or splitters. Lumpers enjoy finding patterns in large groups of texts—an author’s entire oeuvre, a literary genre, a whole historical period—while splitters look closely at a handful of texts, or even just one, searching for the special, innovative, and unique. The foundational texts on popular romance—Ann Snitow’s [...]
Documentary Kickstarter
Yesterday, we had the opportunity to show the reel for our upcoming documentary, Love Between the Covers, at the 2012 Romance Writers of America convention in Anaheim, California! We’re extremely grateful for our reception and to the RWA for giving us the opportunity! We’d like to share the reel with you here as well. Visit LoveBetweentheCovers.com to see the reel [...]
Dreams and day jobs
I always ask romance authors what they wanted to be when they were young—and the answers I get are often surprising. Underwater archaeologist? Cytologist? Who knew? As for the various jobs they’ve had, the answers I get include waitress, journalist, scientist, nurse, and attorney. Some romance authors give up their day jobs as soon as they are able to do [...]
Of saints and angels
I recently joined a medieval Ph.D. comprehensive exam committee. A question about violence as spectacle led to a lively discussion of a recently discovered manuscript describing the martyring of St. George, during which he was split in many pieces—explicitly including dismemberment of his genitalia—three times. No matter how far his body was scattered, it kept coming back to life, thus [...]
Lady Jane’s Salon
Romance authors read aloud from their work on the first Monday of every month in the Soho district of New York City. The cover charge for Lady Jane’s Salon is $5 or “one gently used romance novel.” Net proceeds from the events support an end-of-year donation to a NYC women’s charity. Lady Jane’s Salon was launched in 2009 by three [...]
Magnetism of fairy tales
I grew up on a steady diet of fairy tales. My parents read them aloud to us, and then sprinkled Andrew Lang’s Blue, Green, Brown Fairy Books around the house. But much more importantly, fairy tales truly interested my father, Robert Bly. Years later, when I was in graduate school, he wrote a long analysis of one such story, called [...]
Male virginity
Often enough stereotypes of romance novels rely on a simple yet seemingly appropriate enough logic: alpha male + virgin = romance. While there are certainly more than enough virginal heroines in popular romance novels, we have, in recent years, seen a growing presence of male virgins in romance. Our oversexed alpha males in need of taming have been re-written as [...]
