Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

by Tara Gelsomino, originally posted 3/31/2005

There’s been a lot of ink shed lately over the flagging state of mass-market paperback sales and a lot of theorizing on the part of publishers and distributors on how to fix the problem. The solution that’s been proposed is creating a new size of softcover novels, called upperbacks, which are larger than mass-market books but smaller than trade paperbacks. Quite frankly, this idea stinks. Here’s why:

Even though I have the tremendous good fortune to get a lot of free books at my job (full disclosure: I’m the managing editor of Romantic Times BOOKclub magazine), I STILL go out and buy books. I’m often too impatient (or busy) to get books at my library. And since publishing jobs are not all that lucrative, I usually buy books on sale. Fancy fonts, hard covers or soft–none of this matters to me. I care about the story on the pages. Thus (brace yourselves here, authors), I buy–or have bought–used copies or deeply discounted new copies at BJ’s, Sam’s Club, Wal*Mart and on Overstock.com. Many readers (like myself, before I was told differently) don’t realize that used book sales equal no royalties for the authors. Brace yourselves again, authors, because most readers…wouldn’t care if they knew anyway. (Call it the Napster phenomenon of the publishing world.)

So let’s do a little easy math. If my monthly book budget is $60, and mass-market books are generally about $6 a pop, I can buy 10 books. With the same $60, I can only buy 6 of these new cutely coined “upperbacks” (which are retailing at about $10 each), 5 trade paperbacks (at $12 each) and 3 hardcovers (assuming I use my frequent reader bookstore card and they’re only $20 each). Of course, 10 is better than 5 or 6, and WAY better than 3. By my admittedly one-sided theorizing, mass-market sales should be booming.

Alas, my copy of Publishers Weekly tells me they are not. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think upperbacks are the answer to publishing’s prayers. Though the publishers who’ve jumped on this bandwagon (so far: Penguin/Putnam, Pocket and Harlequin) claim this new format is easier to read with larger fonts, the only thing noticeably bigger in the upperback I peeked at recently was the margins. And, of course, the price tag.

Mass-market readers are genre readers. Genre readers are, in my experience, the most diehard of readers. They read widely and frequently and they’re often on a budget. They definitely don’t want to buy 6 books when they could buy 10. So I don’t understand the logic here. I’m worried these supposedly savvy publishing executives are going to price many people completely out of reading. At the very least, higher-priced books are going to enable the really voracious readers to read less.

Strike that. It will enable them to BUY less. And go to their libraries more, borrow from friends more and–what’s most worrisome for the industry–turn to the Walmarts and the Overstock.coms more. Which means less royalties for authors and less authors able to live comfortably on a writer’s salary. Which means the gradual extinction of genre writers…which means… you get the idea.

The publishers may have the upper hand with these upperbacks, but where does that leave readers and authors?
(Here’s a hint: check out the title of this entry.)

*Revisit previous comments on this post here

by Melani Blazer

(Editor’s Note: Melani submitted this blog entry earlier in the month, but we were just now able to slot it in the schedule. Enjoy!)

For many of us, the next month is going to be filled with hectic schedules, tight budgets and bad weather. For those of you already relaxing in the sunshine, just read along for fun, okay? Because this isn’t just about the weather.

It’s about escape.

How many of us can just book a flight to paradise and disappear when the whim strikes us? (Nods at the lack of hands flying up in the air.) Thought so.

But you wish you could. Heck, we’re nuts if we say we don’t want to—especially now, with those cranky in-laws threatening to visit and nit pick about your cleaning or cooking skills. I probably am not alone when I say my holiday shopping list is MUCH larger than my bank statement. The malls are crazy, people are impatient because they’re under the same stress you are.

Wouldn’t it be nice to simply hop on a plane and visit the Bahamas, Italy, Australia, Hawaii, outer space, Regency England, the palace of a sheikh in Saudi Arabia…?

What? You can’t get away? Too many demands on your time? Pish. I can offer you a way there without hectic travel plans, airport lines or customs checks. It won’t even drain your life savings. Buy, borrow, trade a book. If you can’t, pull out that box of books in the basement and dig through until you go, “Oh, I loved this story.” Wah-lah.

Now, curl up on the couch, or fill that bathtub with hot water or go hide in the closet with a flashlight. Dive into the richness of a story that promises to take you far away from real life. Escape into the arms of an irresistible hero who’s waiting for you in a hammock on a deck overlooking the ocean. At sunset. (Collective sigh) Or become a secret agent, trained in martial arts and a crackshot with handgun. Dishes? Laundry? Ha, not today, buddy, I’ve got a killer to catch. Explore a foreign planet, discover the mystique of magic. Pretend that underneath the layers of Mom, Wife, Housekeeper, Cook… (do I need to go on?) is a princess in hiding, a witch with supernatural powers, or a genius who’s knowledge can save the world.

Just like that jaunt to Jamaica, when you get back, the dishes will be waiting. But you’ll be able to smile and hum along to the sound of steel drums as you go about your busy day.

Around the blogosphere, it’s the time of year when many people write about resolutions and goals, and focus on the future. But Janus (January) was a god with two faces, and one looked back to old beginnings as the other looked forward to new ones. As I think about what I want to accomplish in the next year, I also take the time to appreciate the mileposts of the past, and the roads already taken.

The beginning of my affair with romance publishing: Many moons ago when I was a baby agent just starting out, I received an invitation from the New Jersey Romance Writers to attend their Put Your Heart In a Book conference. I was a bit puzzled as to why they had written me because at the time our agency did not represent a single romance writer. However, upon reading certain oft-quoted statistics about the market-share held by romance novels, I approached my boss and asked if there was any particular reason why we did not work in the genre, and whether he would support my attendance of this conference as an exploratory mission. His reply: “Have a ball!”

I have to admit that I was not extremely well-acquainted with romance novels at that point. I had read my first one when I was much younger: something my mother brought home from the library, quite possibly a Katherine Woodiwiss title, though I can’t say for certain. I also read my mother’s mystery novels, and the science fiction my father preferred. I was an equal opportunity reader and devoured everything I could get voraciously. But romance was not well-represented during that particular time period due to lack of availability. In college, though, I had a room-mate that bought them by the grocery-bag-full. I cheerfully stole from her reading pile because the bookstore on my remote campus couldn’t keep me sufficiently supplied with leisure reading material. With her corrupting influence to aid and abet, I began to understand the wide variety of stories available.

Evenso, when I joined the Donald Maass Literary Agency, the company’s focus was on science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense, and thrillers. I accepted that invitation to the PYHIAB conference without a real understanding of what I was going to experience. However, I dutifully packed my suitcase and headed off. And I still have a very clear memory of my first luncheon at a conference. (I also have a rather vivid memory of my first author-agent appointment, but that’s another story.) I had arrived and changed into a navy suit and headed downstairs to find myself walking into a room in which it at first appeared that everyone else was wearing some shade of red or pink. It was also quite clear to me that these people knew each other well, and had an obvious sense of community. First impressions often stay with us for so long and I still recall wondering if I had made some sort of mistake; if I was going to discover that this was not a place where I would be comfortable. But it was just a high school flash-back. The group was wonderfully welcoming. And their support of each other and of the kind of stories they wanted to tell won me over. They spread the word, and other invitations began to arrive. Soon I was building a section of my client list in the romance genre and making a new beginning that would broaden my career and my reading experience.

Many writers can mark their progress as a series of beginnings: the beginning of the first book, the onset of that initial bout with writer’s block, starting the search for an agent, that first awful form rejection, the first terrible personalized rejection, getting the call and an offer for a book for the first time, and it goes on and on. I’m sure New York Times best-selling authors still have many firsts and many goals ahead of them. Agents can cite the same: the first client, the first sale, the first RITA, the first best-seller…. Looking back I can see that I’ve come a long way since my first romance conference and all of those experiences have contributed to the agent - and reader! - that I am today.

So, as you look towards the next year and the manuscript you want to finish, or the publisher you want to target, don’t forget to appreciate where you began and what started you down the road to romance.

A thread at one of the message boards I frequent had me wondering: how was I “converted” to romance novels?

Talking with other fans and reading that thread, I’ve found many different “initiation” stories. Some people had never read a romance novel until a friend forced them to, others tried one at random and found they liked it, yet others were introduced to the genre by reading authors who now write more mainstream books and seeking out their backlists. Many of them had even actively sneered at the romance genre before trying it out for themselves.

What has struck me, however, is that quite a few hadn’t truly been converted at all, but had always enjoyed reading romance, so the transition to the genre had been pretty seamless. That was exactly my case. In a way, I’ve always been a romance reader, from the very moment I learned to read.

I read a bit of everything as a kid, from typical children’s fare to more grown-up books. I enjoyed them all, from rousing adventures to quiet, more intimate stories. In all of them, however, it was whatever romance there was in them that captured my imagination. Whether it was Emilio Salgari’s adventure books or Alcott’s Little Women, I realize I would always keep an eye out for suggestions of romantic tension between characters.

I cried when Beth died in Little Women, but I was even more upset when Laurie ended up with Amy instead of with Jo (even though I’ve come to appreciate Professor Bhaer over the years). My heart thrilled during the battles at sea of The Black Corsair, but it thrilled even more when the Corsair fell in love with the daughter of his archenemy. In a way, I guess I saw the romance (or what tiny suggestion there was of it) as the cherry on the delicious cake that was a good book.

When I discovered there was actually such a thing as romance novels, books where the whole point was the romance, I was enthralled. Imagine, books where the relationship was central, not an afterthought, or a minor subplot. Not one in which most of the development is implied and has to be read between the lines, but one which is lovingly explored and detailed!

I was so captivated by the idea of these novels, that even the books I didn’t like were worth at least a read. Anything to quench my thirst for romance.

Back in those first heady days of my romance reading, I confess there were very few books I truly and completely liked (and even fewer that have remained in my keeper shelves to these days). I kind of caught the tail end of the bodice-ripper fashion, which is one I’ve never been fond of. I was reading mostly oldish books, and though things were improving, too many of the books I was reading had heroes I detested and heroines I despised.

And still, I read them and reread them. I even ended up with over 20 books in my shelves by an author I’ve never, ever enjoyed. Whenever I saw one of her books in the stores, I knew I wasn’t going to like it, knew I was going to want to cut off the rapist “hero’s” engorged manhood with a rusty spoon and bitch-slap the weak-willed, feisty, hair-tossing, foot-stomping heroine. But it had romance in it, and thus, it was worth reading.

I suppose I’ve become spoilt now. These days, I have a much better knowledge of what’s out there, so even though I’m as much of a romance fan as ever, it’s been a long time since I considered just any romance novel worth reading for the sole reason that it is a romance novel.

I still regard the little touches of romantic relationships in non-romance novels and movies as a lovely extra, though!

All the magazines, stores, and newspapers are putting out their Best of 2005 lists, and because I’m tres disorganized and never write down what I read — I couldn’t do that. However, it has made me think about what I’ve read in 2005, the trends that I hope will continue and trends I hope are on the wane. Please note that this is only one opinion, and I’m by no means an expert, merely an interested reader. I’d love to hear what everyone else’s thoughts are as well, because I’ve discovered that every time I do an RTB column, someone never fails to open up my mind to something new. So, without further ado, here’s my list:

Trend that I Hope Keeps on Trending:
Heavy historical romances/fiction — I love these tomes. They are heavy time-sucks and so I can’t consume many during the year, but I have always loved the historical books that know how to balance pacing with cool (i.e. non-boring) historical details. I was in B&N yesterday and noticed that Susan Carroll has a new series going on that I have completely missed. I picked up the first book, the Dark Queen, and am hoping to read it after the holidays are done.

Trend Fast Becoming a Pain in the Neck
I’m hoping the vampires are on the wane, not a complete ban, mind you, just a lessening of the pesky creatures of the night. This is a personal thing for me; blood-sucking is not sexy pour moi, and even in Buffy, I picked Xander over Angel and Spike. I suppose that’s very un-PC of me, picking living over the dead, but bite me. I did like the DarkHunter series for a bit; Kenyon writes a good romp that’s fun to read, but eventually, I was just sucked dry.

Another Trend that I Hope Simmers Down
Okay, pulling away from the pack, I want to see less emphasis on erotica in romance — not that there’s anything wrong with that. Markets tend to overcompensate when dollars flood in, and it seems like there is shelves upon shelves upon shelves of hot, steamy, thick, turgid, romances plunging deeply into your core and heating up the night. I like romance, I’m even a fan of some erotica (Emma Holly anyone?), but I think we’re losing some of other good, middle of the road and sweet sensuality romance writers in this process.

A Trend From Yesteryear that Needs to Return
The Historical Romance — I’m waiting for the big, break-out historical romance to hit the shelves and thus inspire publishers to return to the historical. It’s coming; I feel it in my bones.

Trend that Needs to Get Trendier
One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that it seems like we’re losing out on some on the basics of romance. The hero/heroine interaction, the falling in love scenes, the “wish I’d said that” dialog, the characters that don’t come from Romance Novel Central Casting. Whenever there is too much of any one thing, it becomes difficult to differentiate itself from the pack of others, and the reader is the one that suffers. However, I am happy to say that I think publishers are more open to new things now than ten years ago, so I do think we’ll see more.

What have you noticed this year? The good and the bad. What trends do you want to see re-emerge?

It’s that time of year when thoughts turn to the upcoming year, our expectations and our dreams. We often look back at the previous year, sometimes with a sense of satisfaction, but in a lot of cases, it’s with disappointment.

So we look forward, and we make goals.

The interesting thing about goals, is that in a lot of cases, goals are made as sort of a wish list. A pie in the sky glance at the coming year. We rattle off things sort of like we’d say we’d like to win the lottery. And then we sit back and wait for those things to happen.

That’s the first big mistake.

Speaking from personal experience, and perhaps why I never make goals or “New Year Resolutions” if you will, most goals are made without a roadmap. We figure out what we want, but we never make a plan for how we’re going to achieve it. This is the single most important factor of the entire equation, and it’s left out.

We want it. No doubt about that. But mostly, we want it easy.

The first question I like to ask when I hear anyone listing their New Year’s Resolutions is okay, now how do you plan to get it accomplished? What’s your plan? Or are you doing the equivalent of wishing on a star?

Romance writer I may be, but I’m definitely a realist.

So to all of you making New Year’s Resolutions this week, I pose one question. Have you created a road map to success? Or are you someone who doesn’t like to stop and ask for directions?

For many of us today, it’s Christmas Eve. For others, this is the season for a multitude of other holidays, including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Regardless of which one, if any, we observe, they all share a common bond: They are all celebrations of life, love, hope, and faith.

As a child, I was exposed to a number of different religions, my mother being of the firm opinion that religion is a personal matter about which everyone should make his/her own decisions. So, in this regard, I had an extremely eclectic upbringing, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I became such an equally eclectic reader, as well.

Still, over the years, I did find myself drawn to certain beliefs and certain books. Looking back today and analyzing all this for this post, I realized that the main reason romance became my favorite genre both to read and to write in is because, just like all the various holidays we
celebrate at this time of year, romance novels consistently send positive messages.

Like most eclectic readers, I have a good grasp of literary fiction and all the other genres, too. So I know that whenever I choose something that falls into one of those sections of bookshelves everywhere, I may be letting myself in, for example, for main characters I can understand, but can’t sympathize with or relate to, motives and themes, etc., that I find depressing or despicable, and, last but not least, reads that are, ultimately, for whatever reasons, real downers. And that’s okay, because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss books like William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

They’re brilliant and tragic. I admire and appreciate them for what they are and the profound insights they offer. But the truth is that, even so, I really don’t want to read them again. Once was enough.

On the other hand, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reread Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. There are countless others, but I mention these two romances especially, simply because they don’t have the traditional happy endings we’ve come to expect from romance novels. But because their endings are ambiguous at best, we, their readers, are free to imagine whatever we wish. We can envision the spirits of Cathy and Heathcliff reunited on some wild, windswept moor on some plane of existence far beyond our ken or Scarlett winning Rhett back, after all.

Would it happen in real life? I don’t know. But in romance novels, whether contemporaries or historicals, inspirationals or paranormals, suspenses or time-travels, love always triumphs in the end, or, at the very least, there is the hope that it will. If there is one secret to the tremendous success of the romance genre worldwide, I think that’s it.

Yes, there are those who criticize the romance genre for its perennially positive messages and idealistic happy endings. I can only wonder why any in the romance genre pay any attention to these Grinches and Scrooges. If these critics don’t want to read about love conquering all and happily-ever-afters, there is plenty of doom and gloom for them to choose from. But as a romance writer myself, I’m glad it’s rarely to be found in the romance genre.

As all the holidays at this time of year remind us, we are at our best when we celebrate those ideals that have the power to change us and our world for the better.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Happy Reading!

I’m a purist when it comes to Point of View, but I have a critique partner who writes literary novels
and he loves to move from omnipotent to male character’s head to female character’s head. His justification?

“Too often, this rather fussy doctrine pointlessly constricts writers’ options and narrows their range. As for the claim that the reader can’t follow multiple or shifting points of view, it is simply false on its face. The whole history of the novel is testimony to the contrary, from Jane Austen to Thomas Pynchon. In masterpiece after masterpiece, the narrative point of view readily changes from page to page, or even from sentence to sentence and only delights as it does so. In fact, one of prose fiction’s grandest strengths, which it exercises for once in effortless superiority over all other narrative media, including the movies, is its ability to dart in and out of any character’s mind at will. To forgo this splendid artistic advantage in the name of some pallid academic theory is really madness.”
–Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop, page 90.

I don’t know if these POV changes bug me because the “no head-hopping” rule has been so thoroughly hammered into me or what, but it really does bother me. Now, I don’t mind changing viewpoints once during a scene, but back and forth from paragraph to paragraph or sentence to sentence? Drives me crazy.

That said, I have to confess that I’ve see it very effectively done as a compare/contrast mechanism. I also found intriguing Koch’s point about writing being the only medium that can head-hop. My critique partner argues, “People who teach point of view in writing classes will sometimes use the camera lens analogy — you’re ‘seeing’ the scene through one character’s eyes — without realizing that this imposes one of the limitations of film on an art form that is free to dispense with it.”

So what do you think? Purist or non-purist?

Within the past few weeks, two of my fellow RTBers have written delightful, witty “Letters to Santa.” In them, they’ve listed a slew of “gifts” every writer hasn’t yearned for at one time or another, from RITA wins to a glorious uninterrupted couple of hours to just write. If I were to add to those lists, I’d ask Santa – especially after this year, oy — for one whole month (or, heck, even week) without getting splatted by some kind of career paintball. No lines closing or suddenly changing word count when you’re two weeks away from deadline, no I-know-we-loved-this-yesterday-but-this-is-today-things-change bombshells, no sales figures that didn’t meet expectations, no covers that bear no resemblance whatsoever to your book, never mind that you spent three hours filling in Art Fact Sheets that rival an application to Oxford.

Except then I plopped my reader hat on and thought, maybe instead of asking Santa for the writing equivalent of that five-carat three-stone diamond I wouldn’t exactly hate seeing in my stocking, what could I – or any of us – give to those authors whose books have given us so much pleasure?

Okay, hold on. . .changing hats again. . .damn, those feathers get stuck to lipgloss. . .

Despite the widespread, bizarrely persistent belief that selling a book somehow assures automatic entry into publishing Nirvana, reality tends to be a little less. . .pretty. Granted, after a gazillion variations of “Your book does not meet our needs at this time,” there are no sweeter words than “We’d like to buy your book.” Not shred, play hacky-sack or line a bird cage with it, but buy it. So that somebody other than your mother and critique partners can read it. Heady stuff, that. So in the midst of all the very well deserved Snoopy dancing, it’s hard to remember that rejection don’t become a thing of the past after that first sale. Not just from editors and agents (alas), but from reviewers and readers. In fact, once your baby is “out there,” it’s fair game for everybody and her cousin to take a pot-shot at. And boy, do they ever. Often with gleeful abandon.

Yes, I know – criticism comes with the territory, we all know not everyone’s gonna like our stuff, you’ve gotta have a thick skin to stay in this business, blah blah blah. And true, one can often find gold among the dross, that nugget of constructive advice that takes your writing to the next level. Still, during those days (or weeks or months) when it seems as though nobody except your mother likes your stuff (and even that’s iffy), the euphoria over making that first, sweet sale seems like a dimly remembered dream.

Because thick skins notwithstanding, we’re not rhinoceroses, after all. A glancing blow every now and then, no sweat. A constant barrage of Bad News however, is enough to make even the toughest old birds – or most resilient young ones – among us begin to look at our ovens and go, “Hmmmm. . .”

Which (finally) brings me back to my point, which is the simple gift of appreciation we can all give to those authors we love, whose books have touched us or made us laugh or at the very least given us a few hours respite from the stresses of our daily life. Nothing makes a writer’s day more than a note or email of thanks from a reader, or stumbling across a positive review or recommendation. On those days when the oven calls, those affirmations that maybe you don’t suck as much as you thought you did are like gold.

As it happens, one of the reasons I finally caved about having a blog was the opportunity it would give me to talk up books I loved, especially those by new or mid-list authors who need all the publicity they can get. Even though I don’t read nearly as much as I’d like these days, settling in with a good book still gives me the same thrill as it did when, as an adolescent, I’d lug as many books home from the library as I could fit in my puny little arms, devouring them one after the other like chocolates. And even today, when I find one that knocks my socks off, I just have to share.

So this holiday season, if you’ve been meaning to send that note to an author whose story and characters kept you up until the wee hours, now’s a good a time as any. With so many having websites now, it’s a piece of cake. Really. If you lurk on a reader website, come on down and tell the rest of us what you’ve been reading. Or post that review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or chat about it on your blog. Since reader word-of-mouth drives sales more than any other factor, if you want more books from that author, let the world know about her. And let her know how much all her hard work meant to you.

A precious, priceless gift that costs the giver nothing other than a few minutes on the computer.

And no Santa required.

Lately I’ve noticed a growing trend–not that this device hasn’t been used before it just seems to be popping up pretty regularly lately–the use of destiny.

Destiny. Never mind that you are the most unattractive male I’ve ever seen–that third eye should be a real turnoff. Never mind that your people (and maybe even you) are responsible for the near decimation of my people–yeah, I saw you grab granny for a late night snack. Never mind that basically, I just don’t like you–you locked me in a cellar for twenty years, for hades sake. I still long for you, can’t leave your side, and would sacrifice myself just to spend one more second in your arms.

Yep, destiny.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this trend. First, I love paranormal romances, and I can see the obvious benefits of using destiny. Face it, one of the hardest parts of writing a good romance is a believable conflict that somehow the h/h overcome and get their HEA in the end. Well, destiny can make this easy–you can pile on the reasons for them to hate each other and it won’t matter. Cause you have destiny on your side.

And, corny as this sounds, this can actually really work for me as a reader. But then, of course, there are other times the use of destiny brings out the fourteen-year-old girl inside me. “Puhleez.” Eye roll. “You have got to be kidding me.” Another eye roll. “Come on–knee him in the…” Okay, that last was closer to the forty-year-old me. But, you get the idea.

So, what works and what doesn’t? I’m curious to get your take on it. I’m going to list a few ways I’ve seen destiny used in eye-roll inducing order.

• H/H meet and it ain’t all midnight snacks at the park. Sure he is attractive, but there are some major problems here–like the fact that he is undead, and perhaps the embodiment of evil. The heroine fights the attraction. She trys to keep away from him, but somehow along the way she discovers he is a lot more than sharp teeth and noon-time naps. There is something more to this guy–something she falls for. If anything though his claims of destiny (to her, a loss of choice) are just one more barrier–she isn’t a puppet for the mystically-inclined to jerk around. She doesn’t want to be manipulated–she has to believe, and in the end, after plenty of struggles (with herself and him) she realizes she loves him. Eye Rolls: none. Fab book–read it again.
• Heroine is short, fat, and possibly missing an ear. H/H meet. He is drop-dead gorgeous. Man, what a hunk! Okay, he is a little overbearing, and oh yeah, he is dead, but even though she never believed in that stuff before, she can overlook it–cause well he is gorgeous and she couldn’t get a date if she had box seats to the Superbowl. Besides, it’s destiny–they are meant to be together. It must be right. Eye Rolls: at least one, but I can get past it, because, well, what a great fantasy.
• Heroine hears many tales of Hero’s evil–she can’t wait to meet him and drive a stake through his heart. She really hates this guy. Finally, H/H meet. He is grotesque. He doesn’t deny that his people massacred hers. She is brave, beautiful and, we are lead to believe, smart. She takes one look at him and falls at his feet. Never mind he ate her entire family, never mind that third eye I mentioned earlier–he is hers, it’s destiny. They set off to save the world. Eye Rolls: who are we kidding my entire body is twitching.

Okay, so how about you? Do you like destiny or does it send you into spasms? Reading over my list, I realize, for me, destiny isn’t good or bad. In fact it isn’t even the real issue. For me, it’s all about the characters. Make them strong (personal preference, I love a strong heroine) and make them believable, and chances are, I’ll be sitting there rooting them on.

May your destiny and this holiday season be filled with many hours of happy reading–and happy endings to all!

Lori