Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

Seven displaced romance novel heroes. One matchmaker devoted to giving them Happily Ever After.

Pilot Episode

(An upscale bar. Five attractive women, four with red hair, are chatting at a table in the corner. Six other women in various stages of intoxication are throwing back shots at the bar. Six men wait in a private room under the supervision of an agitated professional matchmaker, who scowls when a seventh man enters the room.)

Matchmaker: A vampire walks into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a great joke, but there’s nothing funny about you being an hour late.

Dante Dracovich: Complain to Daylight Savings Time. I didn’t make the sun set at nine.

Matchmaker: No more excuses from any of you. If you’re not going to take this seriously, hit the road, keeping in mind your deposit is nonrefundable. I’m going to go talk to the girls, tell them how fabulous you are, and get them liquored up before I send you out to mingle. Talk amongst yourselves.

Man with Lacy Cravat and Skintight Pants: I shall begin. I am Lord Tristan, Duke of Lanshropberktershire.

Christian Rockvanfellerbilt: Uh-huh. Where, exactly, is that located?

Tristan: It’s just north of Liverwurstershire.

Bane Aphelion: Ah, yes. Latifah, Queen of Newark, has a summer home there.

Tristan: Is that so? I must say, I am quite put out that I have never received an invitation from Her Majesty. We are practically neighbors, after all.

Bane: I know what’ll be fun. Let’s play a word-association game. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say “Regency rake”?

Tristan: Illicit rendezvous with lady fair.

Christian: Fashion fit for the artist-once-again-known-as Prince.

Dante: Gonorrhea.

Tristan: I beg your pardon!

Dante: I was there, buddy. Every one of you players swizzled your stick in some kind of pox.

Tristan: At least I haven’t adopted a pseudo-Romanian alias like a certain nocturnal fiend who used to be known to the ton as Donald Dunston.

Dante: You know, fop, a stake in the heart will kill a human, too.

Christian: Don’t make me separate you two. Unlike some people who inherited their fortunes along with their blue blood, I earned my billions by exerting my dominance over those who would waste time on such petty pursuits when they should be working as hard as I do to achieve my success.

Mitch Ruger: Please. Your great-granddaddy was the last member of your family to break a sweat. A hard day’s work for you is signing too many credit card receipts.

Christian: What do you know, and what is that lump under your arm?

Mitch: My gun. I work for a top-secret government-funded law enforcement agency whose acronym you’ve never heard of, rescuing trust-fund suckers like you from bad guys who want to part you from your money and your lives. I’ve been shot, stabbed, and once spent a week in a pit in Somalia, surviving on bugs and dew, all in the line of duty. I bring home five figures a year for that, so I don’t want to hear any whining about how rough your board meetings are, rich boy.
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I tend to be very herocentric when it comes to romance novels. I want to know the hero’s weaknesses and flaws, I want a good look at his scars and the chip on his shoulder, I want the worst of him revealed, and I want to be convinced he deserves to be loved in spite of it. Most of my favorite books are favorites because the hero’s role struck a chord in me.

I want the heroine to be fully developed and relatable, of course, but unless she’s so weak I want to slap her into the next zip code, I can accept her as anything from soft and gentle to kickass and abrasive. Maybe I subconsciously feel all women are inherently lovable and therefore don’t need the heroine’s worthiness proven me to the same extent. Maybe I simply find the hero more interesting because of the mystery men represent.

There is one type of heroine, however, who can motivate me to pick up a book even if no other element of the story appeals to me. That heroine is the woman who has never before had a man treat her with the fiery passion that heats up the pages of the best romance novels. I can live without the old virgin widow setup (it’s not a lack of sexual experience I’m referring to, after all, but a lack of experience with passion, which extends beyond the physical aspect of a relationship), but there are any number of other reasons she may have missed out that do work for me.

• She’s a Plain Jane or overweight.
• She’s “one of the guys.”
• She’s nerdy or shy.
• She’s been focusing on her education, career, or family obligations to the exclusion of all else for a period of time.
• She may even be too tough for any of the men she’s known in the past to handle.

No deep introspection is required to tell me why I like that heroine. We have a bond from page one because she’s me in many respects. Of course I’m going to cheer for her when she finds the man who sees her in a way no one else ever has and gives her that long overdue, soul-searing love, without the condition she become something different to earn it. I consider her HEA a triumph (albeit a fictional one) for geeky tomboys everywhere.

Do you have a favorite type of heroine? Is she like you, or is she your polar opposite?