Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

One of my most favorite things is to see the movie version of a book I’ve loved. Take Where the Heart Is, for instance. I’d seen the preview and decided to pick up the book before I saw the movie. When I finished, I’m was cautiously optimistic. Book-to-movie adaptations didn’t rank high with me.

With the exception of Gone With the Wind — I love both the book and movie equally, for different reasons — I’d always been disappointed in the translation from print to screen.

The moment the on-screen version of Novalee Nation was introduced as being five months pregnant (rather than seven) with an unnatural fear of the number five (rather than seven), I fumed. My husband, who had taken me to see the movie, couldn’t understand why I was so irritated. “It’s just two numbers different.” But it wasn’t just two numbers to me. The screenwriter(s) had taken a prominent aspect of Novalee’s character — her fear of the “most lucky” number ever — and flipped it on its head, thereby nullifying its impact.

I’m currently spending my Sunday nights between 9 and 10 p.m. glued to HBO and “True Blood“. During Season 1, I made mental lists of what had been changed in the small screen adaptation of Charlaine Harris’ books. This season, however, I’ve decided I just don’t care because essentially, while characters have the same name as in the books, they aren’t the same. I almost believe I like “True Blood” better.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is one of my favorite books that made me just sob, but, I’m sorry, Eric Bana is not who I pictured in my mind’s eye as Henry. Will I see it when it finally hits the big screen later this year? I don’t know yet (though I’m certainly intrigued by the trailer).

At what point, do the differences of “book versus movie” just not matter?

After reading two works of historical fiction in a row, I suddenly realized that the HEA promised by a romance novel cuts down a lot of the anxiety I worked myself into when I began to fear the books would not end happily. Ultimately, one book ended great, but the other had such a terrible ending I rushed immediately into the arms of a romance novel.

So many discussions regarding the romance genre center around the happily-ever-after codicil. Arguments have flared where a demarcation between the pro-HEA and anti-HEA has been drawn. But the HEA is much more complicated than being for or against it. I admit to finding the emphasis on the HEA confining–I don’t care about things like long separations or the h/h forming relationships with others before or after (!!) meeting one another, etc, as long as I know the h/h will end up together and ride off into the sunset. However, after this experience with not knowing how the book would end (I’m not a peeker), I came to appreciate the reassurance the word “romance” on the spine represents. Anyways, I think the so-called anti-HEA’s have come to associate “HEA” with gooey, mushy endings filled with miraculous pregnancies and tamed rakes making mud pies with their offspring (Blech, that’s enough to give me a sugar rush), and desire a greater flexibility for the endings of romance novels to mitigate this trend.

The presence of the ironclad HEA in romance has long drawn derisive criticism from outsiders. Because of the happily-ever-after, romances are inherently formulaic and lacking in any kind of literary quality. We can argue all day, until the cows come home, that mysteries always end with the crime solved or sf/f always centers around the Hero’s Journey, but my rebuttal is simpler than that: the HEA allows me to read in peace. All reading is a form of escapism, all of it, but when I read a romance, I want to close the covers of a book with a smile on my face. Not just the smile of triumph over adversity–which is what I feel when I read say, Freedom Writers–but the smile of knowing that I read a really great book with wonderful characters whose journey of falling in love was exciting, emotional and just plain fun (even the angsty books). When I read a romance, that HEA promises that no matter what, the h/h will over come their personal demons and society to make a lifelong connection that everyone craves in their life.

The HEA also assures me of fairness. The HF with the terrible ending was so terrible because it was completely unfair. The narrator had created a life based on a lie, but on no account did he deserve the ending he received. Yes, real life is imperfect and messy, but shouldn’t fiction exist to give a bit of hope in the midst of that messiness? I can’t help but think that the assumption that unhappy endings equal “true literature” is born from some pretty miserable people. And on that note, much of what we consider “classic” literature have happy, or at least hopeful, endings! Fiction can be used to teach, but why begrudge readers who want their lesson to be that love and a lasting relationship can exist no matter what?

A few years ago, as I was wrapping up my first class on romance fiction, an Indian American student told me that she had loved these novels partly because they reminded her of Bollywood movies. When I told her that I’d never seen one, she was shocked–and, that summer, emailed me a list of some of her favorites.

Because I’m lucky enough to live in a suburb with a large South Asian population–my son’s best friend is from Nepal, for example–all my wife and I had to do was swing by the public library. There they were, in the “Foreign” section: row after row of films with heretofore inscrutable names like Kal Ho Naa Ho and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, all but a few with subtitles, most of them long enough to watch over a couple of evenings, often with a marked “intermission” halfway through.

That summer, we went on a Bollywood binge. Night after night, after the kids went to bed, we’d stay up watching gorgeous men and women in (mostly) glamorous settings–not just India, but in immigrant communities from New York City (Kal Ho Naa Ho) to Melbourne, Australia (Salaam Namaste). We fell in love with the songs and dances, many with dizzying changes of costume and setting over the course of the number. We got used to the dizzying changes of mood in a single film: not just comedy and drama, but winks of self-parody, tear-jerking sentiment, and the broadest of slapstick humor. Everything on our list was a love story, although the rules of engagement–especially the behavior these plots allowed their heroines–took a little getting used to.

By the fall, the binge had petered out–but it left a mark on our iPod and conversation. And a few months ago, when we signed up for Netflix and Roku, the streaming movie service, we started watching Bollywood again, this time as a family affair.

First came Chak de India!, a wonderful feminist drama about the Indian women’s field hockey team and its coach, played by the legendary Shahrukh Kahn. My son loved the sports angle; my daughter, the girl power message, and the rocking soundtrack; my wife…well, I did mention Shahrukh, right? Next was Om Shanti Om, whose reincarnation / mystery / revenge / love story plot and echoes of older movies reminds me a little of Kenneth Branagh’s Dead Again, but with more humor and a fistful of amazing dance numbers. It’s also contributed lots of catch phrases to our family lexicon, including “What the fish?” and (finger snap) “Dream Sequence!” and, of course, the movie’s big quotable motto: “If it isn’t a happy ending, then the movie isn’t over yet.”

Our latest favorite is a movie set in Amristar, the Punjabi city you might have seen in Bride and Prejudice. It’s called Rab Ne Bana di Jodi, which means something like “A Couple Made by God,” and its plot draws on all sorts of tropes familiar to romance readers : the abrupt marriage of convenience (in this case, to please a father); courtship under a secret identity; healing and redemption through love. Again there’s the mix of sentiment and humor, subtle and broad; again there are lots of winks and inside jokes that I’m actually starting to get. What really wows me in the movie, though, is that it’s a version of Inspirational romance, but with a very different version of religious faith and its relationship to romantic love. My favorite song in the movie, “Tujh Mein Rab Dikhta Hai” (“In You I See God / Oh, What Shall I Do?”), features our hero by turns in a temple (Hindu? Sikh? I’m not sure), then a church, then a mosque, singing a hymn to his wife the whole time. I don’t know if that’s anything special to an Indian viewer–there’s a similar ecumenical theme in another film I liked, the historical epic Jodha Akhbar–but I’ll tell you, it blew me away and has been haunting me ever since.

I don’t know if every romance reader will like these movies as much as I have, but they’re a reminder that romance is a global phenomenon, and there’s a world of love stories out there. To help you get started, I’ve listed a few of my family’s favorites already–and if you want more, here’s the list my student gave me all those years ago, with her notes and a few of mine.

Enjoy!

The ones I’ve talked about: Chak de India!, Om Shanti Om, Rab Ne Bana di Jodi, Jodha Akhbar

My ex-student’s list:

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) “Sweet love triangle between friends”–my kids loved this one, and it’s my son’s friend’s favorite

Diwale Dulhania Le Jayenga (1995) “(classic romance plot, bit of violence too)”

Lagaan: Once Upon Time in India (2001) (takes place in colonial India, more of a historical romance)–a lots of great patriotic themes mixed in with a cricket sports plot that you can, I promise, follow without knowing anything about cricket!

Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) “(the one that takes place in New York) (funny as well)” –but also a tearjerker!

Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999). “Aishwarya Rai is in it. It’s a good example of patriarchal love evolving into companionate love.”

Mohabbatein (2000)–more melodramatic, and more about the men than the heroine

Hum Tum (2004) “(like an Indian version of When Harry Met Sally)”

Dil Chahta Hai (2001) “(follows the love lives of three men)”

Baghban (2003) “(follows the love story of a couple who is older) (my mom’s favorite, she highly recommends it!)”–this one I haven’t seen yet myself, but I’ll pass it along!

I read a lot. I love reading and I’m not especially picky when it comes to my reading. What I mean by that is if you list a town in New York and tell me details about that town I’m not going to check to see whether you were accurate in your description. I’m going to trust you know what you’re talking about or maybe give you an embellishment allowance—this is fiction after all.

I mostly tend to read contemporaries, whether it be suspense, para, chick lit or whatever. I don’t check the facts to see if a Beretta XYZ could really shoot like that or if Manolo’s really cost that amount of money. I do, however, wonder what happens to shifters clothes whenever they shift—seems like they’d need an extensive wardrobe—but that’s not even a big deal. I have a pretty big suspension of disbelief for certain things.

I don’t read a lot of historicals and one of the reasons is the “are you sure that was possible in that time period” question. I’m not a huge history buff, but I have a pretty good idea about certain things and when they are disregarded it does pull me out of the story. I hate being pulled out of a story.

And that’s the thing. The stuff that pulls me out of a story are often common editorial misses (and it happens so easily, there’s no blame here), but sometimes they are just common sense.

Editorial issue: the baby that belonged to one person in the first part of the story and half way through belong to another. Or someone’s name changed part way through the book. Or maybe their eyes or hair colour. Or sometimes it was a certain day and now it’s before then or days afterwards and we’re not given any ryhme or reason for the change.

Common sense: that sexual scene that has your character doing a 360 in a certain position without damaging anyone’s body parts. Don’t think so. Or perhaps a scene has been described as the weather being so hot you could fry an egg, yet someone is skipping rope barefoot. Maybe it’s only me, but I wonder how good that could feel. Or maybe the heroine is attending a rooftop party and having a great time, yet at the beginning of the story we were told she’s afraid of heights and there is no mention of her being worried or suddenly getting over it. Or a common one I see in romance: the lathing. Come on–get over the lathing already. A lathe is a machine that shapes wood, or sometimes other material. You do not want to be doing that to anyone’s body. Unless you’re writing a thriller.

Maybe no one else wonders about stuff like this. Maybe it’s only me.

The problem is if I start wondering about something, or flip back to see if I missed something, then I’ve been pulled out of the story. And it can take a lot of effort to figure out what’s going on. Some of the stories have still been enjoyable enough for me to shrug my shoulders and carry on. It’s actually quite rare for me to have a DNF, because I really do want to like what I’ve chosen to read. But, sometimes, I just can’t. And then I tend to not recommend that book. And I love recommending books.

I’m sure I’ve read tons of stories that have issues that I’ve never noticed because I was just so drawn in. The thing is you may have errors (and, seriously, it can be as simple as a nefarious typo that changes the intent of the words), but if you write the tightest, best damn book ever and use your common sense, then, likely, your reader won’t even notice.

Maybe it is the team building businessgal in me but I love, love, love reading the dedication pages in romance novels.

Well, I guess I should say dedications because many publishers no longer devote a special page to them. Harlequin Historicals, for example, likes to sneak them onto the page listing the author’s other works or the author’s notes page or I’ve even found them at the back of books. I had to search for Elizabeth Rolls‘ intriguing dedication to Joanna Maitland in Lord Braybrook’s Penniless Bride (Joanna Maitland sounds like she’s a blast – I’ve read a few hilarious dedications to her).

But the fact that the dedications are hidden makes them all the more… real… I guess the word is. They aren’t being used as marketing tools. They’re more like private messages between the authors and the recipients. Providing a cover quote may benefit both authors but doing the work that prompts a dedication? Unseen with no expectation of a return.

The dedication doesn’t have to be to a ‘famous’ person to be enjoyable. I love reading about proud moms, book carrying dads, long suffering spouses, easily embarrassed kids, martini drinking best friends, and manuscript eating terriers. I don’t need to know names or personal stuff. I simply like knowing that the author is surrounded by love and is passing it along in her or his novels.

(I do gleam some interesting tidbits. In Sally MacKenzie’s The Naked Earl, I found out Sally MacKenzie has that rare relative, a romance reading dad. Maybe that’s why her heroes are so unique.)

Then there are the reader dedications, especially for stories long in coming. When A Lover’s Kiss came out, Margaret Moore’s long awaited sequel to Kiss Me Quick, after a four year wait, she dedicated it to the readers who asked (again and again and again) for Drury’s story. I crowed with delight when I saw that, waving the book under my hubby’s nose. “See,” I told him, tapping the page. “She dedicated it to me.” ‘Course he then pointed out that my name was not ‘all those’ (dang voice of reason).

Although a dedication isn’t a selling point for me, I hesitate a bit when I see there’s no dedication. That, to me, is a little bit sad. I want to give the author a big hug and tell her I believe in her.

Am I the only one reading book dedications? Readers, whom would you dedicate a novel to? Writers, how do you decide whom to dedicate a novel to? (The issue I have – I have a cast of thousands to thank)

by Special Guest Marie Force

Someday we may look back and laugh at the disastrous year known as 2009. No, I’m not talking about the economy, although that has had our attention as well. I’m talking about the series of calamities that has befallen my family since January. It all began on a regular old snowy Sunday. I was lying on my bed reading a book when my sister-in-law called from Florida. “Something is wrong with your dad,” she said.

She and my brother had been visiting him in Ft. Lauderdale where he spends two months every winter. Since my mother died five years ago, we’ve worried about him taking off by himself. However, since he’s in great health and prides himself on driving 800 miles the first day (yes, you read that right), we send him off with a fond farewell and hope for a safe trip. That Sunday in January his blood sugar was low, he got up too fast, went down hard, and suffered a head injury similar to that which killed Natasha Richardson. Lucky for us, he had family in town, they realized something was wrong, and were able to get him to a major trauma center where they saved his life.

I flew down a few days later, and my brother and I broke the news to him in stages: you’re not staying in Florida for February, we’re driving you home, and when you get there, you’ll be staying with Marie’s family until you’re back on your feet. Fabulous, said our fiercely independent dad. That road trip was one for the ages—with the “patient” micromanaging every one of the 950 miles. Can you spell S-T-R-E-S-S? He ended up living with us for two and a half months—a time that I know my children will never forget. They suddenly had a defense attorney at their disposal. “Oh come on,” he’d say. “Let him stay up a little later!” or “She does not look trashy in that outfit. She looks beautiful.”

You’d think a life-threatening head injury would be enough for any one family for a while, right? Well, it gets better. Since we brought my dad home, my brother and his wife of 17 years have divorced, my aunt died, my 17-year-old dog Consuela was put to sleep (a body blow of epic proportions from which I’m still recovering), and two weeks to the day after that, my father-in-law died. My husband returned to work after his father’s funeral to learn that one of his co-workers had taken his own life, a death that rocked my already-rocked husband to his core. I’ve begun to have serious anxiety about what could be next…

Any one of these things would be enough on its own, but taken together we’ve begun to wonder if a dark cloud has descended over our normally happy family. You begin to look for the silver linings. My children are healthy, happy, and thriving. My father made a full recovery. At 75 years old, that’s a miracle in itself when you consider the grave injury he sustained just a few months ago. I watched him back his 36-foot-boat out of the dock for the first time this season, thinner than he’s been since I was a child, a big smile on his face, and I realized that nothing else mattered but having him healthy and back with us to spend another summer on the boat we all love.

The second half of the year began on July 1, the day my second novel, Love at First Flight, was released. Will this be the turning point we’ve waited for since January? We can only hope so! Love at First Flight has been many years in the making. I overheard a conversation that gave me the idea for the book while waiting for a delayed flight in 1999. A twenty-something guy and girl—not together—were lamenting the challenges of their long-distance relationships. Each were heading to see their significant others for the weekend and were worried about how the time together would go. They realized they were on the same flight home and agreed to meet up to compare notes.

What if, I wondered, they fell for each other? So I wrote that book! Toss in an out-of-control murder trial and two exes that don’t go quietly and you have a recipe for a fun, unconventional romance. Wild on Books said, “Love at First Flight by Marie Force is most definitely a keeper. It is an astounding book. I loved every single word!” I finished the book in 2006 and sold it last year, nearly ten years after an eavesdropping session led to a novel idea.

Fingers crossed that the launch of Love at First Flight is the start of a happy, peaceful second half of 2009!

Have you ever had a year like the one I’ve had? What kept you going during the trying times? What was your turning point?

I’m a book club slut. There, I said it. I belong to 2 book clubs [officially], and 2 book clubs [unofficially--which means I just haven’t attended the first one...yet], and I’m an honorary [founding] member of the one I left behind in California when we moved to Texas last year [though I’ll be paying a guest visit to the Book Babes real soon!].

Each book club I belong to offers something different. One is very serious. One is raucous and wild. One is plain old fun and half the women don’t actually read the book. And two are sort of in between.

I love them all for several reasons.

1. Going to book club is grown up time; as a mom of 5 there’s NEVER enough grown up time.
2. Sometimes we get to drink fun alcoholic beverages and eat frou-frou fun girly food, and for the record, there are rarely fun drinks and frou-frou food in my house [did I mention 4 of said 5 children are boys and frou-frou food is NOT their thing?].
3. The conversations…yes, they always involve the books [some more than others]! We get to talk about themes and plots and characters and motivations…and the other women aren’t writers and it’s awesome to hear their perspectives on the books we read.
4. I feel smarter after we read a ‘deep’ book! It’s like college again. I could get a degree in Book Club-ology.
5. It’s very fun to dig into a ‘lighter’ book and pull deeper meaning from it–whether or not the author intended for that meaning or symbolism or whatever to be there.
6. I read things I may never have picked up otherwise, so it’s very mind-opening.

We’ve read quite a selection of books in my book clubs. Here’s a sampling:

*The Middle Place — LOVED it.
*Water for Elephants — LOVED it.
*Madame Bovary — Seiously, one of the best of all time? It was tough to get through, but I did!
*Gone With the Wind — One of my faves.
*March — pretty good.
*The Reading Group — pretty good.
*Adam — pretty good. Lots of symbolism.
*Same Kind of Different as Me — LOVED it.
*The Year of Living Biblically — Liked it.
*On Beauty — okay, but the rest thought it was a dud!
*Thirteen Minutes — Distrubing, but good.
*A Thousand Splendid Suns — Really Liked it.
*Wake — Good
*Outliers — Really LOVED it. So thought provoking.
*The Glass Castle — LOVED it.
Currently Reading: *Valley of the Dolls; *The Faith Club; *Age is Just a Number; and *The Enchantress of Florence

So, am I alone in my book club slut syndrome? Do you belong to one? More than one? What are some of your favorite book club reads?

It used to be that homosexuality was the immediately identifiable Mark of Wickedness and Evil. In 2000, Candy Tan critiqued “The Completely Despicable Gay Uber-Villain” at AAR’s At the Back Fence blog, deploring “the constant and pretty much consistent association of homosexuality, bisexuality and almost anything other than regular heterosexual sex with everything evil,” labeling it as “the lure of Instant Depravity—‘For Immediate and Complete Evilness, Just Add Homosexuality!’”

I would argue, though, that Gay Insta-Evil has almost always gone hand-in-hand with Insta-Evil Sadism. In fact, sadism has always been a much more reliable indicator of uber-villainy than homosexuality. For example, Mary Novak, concurring with Tan at AAR, argues that “Jack Randall [of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander] is a pretty extreme villain for any romance, but the fact that he’s also bisexual doesn’t offend me the way some less extreme gay villains have. Why?” Because “it’s clear that sadism is Randall’s main pathology, and his sexual inclination is relatively incidental.” By this logic, then, Randall isn’t a villain because he’s not heterosexual; he’s the villain because he’s a sadist — a conclusion that implies that it is both acceptable and expected to represent sadism this way because all sadists are clearly evil. Sadism, after all, is still a clinical pathology.

So while the world has changed enough that it is mostly unacceptable to use homosexuality as a short-cut symbol of depravity, sadism is a natural, obvious, and logical replacement in popular romance.

Ironically, even BDSM romances use sadism as a marker for villainy. BDSM, of course, is the combined acronym that covers a multitude of “unusual” sexual practices and alternate sexualities: the initials cover Bondage/Discipline, Domination/submission, and Sadism/Masochism. Almost all romances that bill themselves as BDSM romances, though, are actually D/s romances, following a relationship as it’s built through sexual power exchange, a formal, ritualized version of the underlying power negotiations of ALL popular romance, vanilla or kinky.

The bad characters, though, are sadists or masochists. Former bad relationships usually went bad because the former lover, whether sadist or masochist, wanted more pain than the main character was willing to give/take. The villian or the stalker or the serial murderer or the annoying guy — they’re almost always too extreme for the main characters, the author, and the reader. True sadism and masochism are usually a sign, even in BDSM romance, that something isn’t quite right with a character.

I’ve encountered two books recently that are actually SM romances, rather than purely D/s romances. They’re wonderful–but very very different–examples of how sadism and masochism can be represented as healthy sexual identities that can contribute to, even be the foundation of, a healthy, joyous relationship. Anah Crow’s Uneven is not for the faint of heart and can be shockingly violent, while Victoria Dahl’s sweet little Spice ebook The Wicked West is an historical Western with a couple of spanking scenes. But both of them show sadism and masochism as a sexual identity, both of them show how much healthier the characters are if they stay true to who they are, and both of them show how hot this aspect of sex can be. And neither of them fall into the easy way out of making the villain more “extreme” than the main characters.

From villainy to heroism–maybe sadism will come into its own in the romance genre one day soon!

My toddler has the chicken pox, and my husband is away, so I’m confined to the house with the boy until he’s no longer contagious. It’s no big deal, he’s fine, but it’s had an unexpected side effect for me.

I’ve had nothing to read.

My house, of course, is full of books. Many of them, I haven’t read yet. And yet I’ve been wandering the house at a loose end, picking up a book and putting it down, starting something and then discarding it after a page or two. Since I’m someone who will read and reread the instructions on shampoo bottles if there’s nothing else, this is pretty unusual. I think it’s because I have such stringent requirements for what I need to read just now.

I’m at the point midway through writing the first draft of my book when I pause and think about the plot and where it’s going. When I was beginning to write this book, I was on a total women’s fiction/chick lit/romance reading kick, and I don’t know if I was feeling insecure or what, but I seemed to be a bit too easily influenced by what I read. Subconsciously, or even consciously, I’d nick bits of ideas from the books I was reading and try to shoehorn them into my plot. One result of this was that I started and restarted this manuscript three times, with three completely different scenarios. When I got to the fourth attempt, I started getting it right. But I decided I wouldn’t read any more books in my genre until I’d got my own plot solidified in my head.

Plus, my own book sucks at the moment and reading something really amazing in my genre would just depress the hell out of me right now. You’re not supposed to have professional jealousy, but—there it is. Jennifer Crusie or Marian Keyes would push me over the edge.

So romance and chick lit and women’s fiction of any description are out. That cuts out 3/4 of my TBR pile.

For another thing, I’m on my own a lot of the time this week. I’m also exhausted. I need something escapist and light to read, something absorbing but not challenging. Nothing literary, or depressing, or scary, or disturbing. For example, I tried reading some Philip K Dick stories, and though I was very impressed and entertained, after the fourth or fifth one, I just about felt like cutting my own throat.

That cuts out the other quarter of my TBR pile.

I could reread something, but I’m stuck in my house. Everything’s too familiar already. I want something new.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue. I’d go to the library or the book shop and I’d pick up something, or lots of somethings, that are perfect. But I can’t do that. I’ve ordered some books on the internet, but they take a few days to arrive. I could buy some ebooks, but I don’t have a reader and my back would report me to the police for assault if I sat in this computer chair much more.

I found the solution eventually—a friend brought round a care package of her books for me. My toddler’s poxes all scabbed up today, which means tomorrow I can go to the library too. So my dilemma is at an end. My habit is being fed.

Shayera wrote yesterday’s column about having book cravings, and gorging herself on one particular kind. That’s something I’ve done too, but I’m talking about something a little bit different—about the uses of reading as mood enhancer. How, at certain points in your life, you just need a certain kind of book, and nothing else will do. Romance and happy endings have got me through some very difficult times in my life; my friend’s Star Trek novels are going to get me through the end of this virus.

Have there been times in your life when only a certain kind of book will do, not because you want it, but because you need it?

I have a terrible habit. I have a tendency to suck a genre dry. Over and over again. I go through phases. Currently, I’ve drained the paranormal genre of its juices. (Oof, that’s a terrible pun. And completely unintentional.) All the books next to my bed, stacked up in my office, not to mention my living room, have were-something, vampires, witches or demon hunters on the cover. There are some of the “classics” of the genre, which I’ve re-read and there are even a couple upcoming titles that I picked up at BEA last month. But they’re all about to get shoved over. I’ve reached the point of no return. At least for right now.

Of course, two months ago, I was totally immersed in contemporaries. Not romantic suspense. Straight contemporaries. Do you know how difficult it is to find those? Right now, it’s a bit difficult. The stack next to my bed had been building up for about six months. And right now it looks like I’m about to head off to a historical binge. This is standard reading procedure for me. My Mom says that even as a small child, I did this. She’s have to read endless fairies tales to me. Or animal fantasies. She claims I even made her read the entire Oz series. That one I rather doubt. Even I doubt that I was that precocious a child. Even now, that’s a pretty long stretch of my attention span.

I first started reading romances in the early 1980s. I remember being in India, visiting family, and seeing comic strips in the daily paper of Barbara Cartland novels. Seriously. I can’t remember what the title was, but I remember clearly reading the strip every day. Which I’ve always wondered who greenlit those. It’s incongruous, to say the least. That same trip, my great Aunt introduced me to her Georgette Heyer collection.

As soon as I got home, I ran off to the library and used book store in town to stock up. Between those two, I brought home about 35 Cartlands. (I know!) Which I had to sneak past my father. He’s one of those “disapproves of romance novels” types. It was ever so nice of them to number the books, so that I could keep track of the ones I’d read more easily. And that’s how I’ve gone on since. I read my way through those books. And then onto the entire Heyer oeuvre. Followed by Mary Stewart. After that I discovered Harlequin. 6 new books every month! My little public library in Upstate New York subscribed.  And of course I was hooked. But I’ve never been someone who would read a contemporary and then a historical. It’s always been a bunch of one genre at a time.

Sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to be moving on to. I’ll be immersed in a story and when I come to the end, I discover that I’m done. I just can’t read another (fill in the genre) at this time. Onward to the next. That’s among the best things about working in a library. Between all the professional journals that come across my desk and publisher catalogs/websites, I’m constantly learning about new titles and new authors I should be picking up. I make lists to help me keep track of release dates. I have a spreadsheet set up as well as cataloging software that helps me keep track of what I’ve read. It’s possible I’m a bit OCD about my books. I think quite a few librarians are, to tell you the truth.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I stop buying books in the genres I’m not currently reading. Any time I run across a book by an author I read, the book gets picked up. And it gets added to a the next “to be read” pile. The next cool book I read about on a blog? Gets picked up and added to the pile. Once a book gets read, it gets cataloged and shelved on my already overwhelmingly overflowing bookshelves. Maybe I need to check with Wendy to see where she gets her storage boxes.