Over the past few months, I’ve gotten rather picky about newer historicals. I’m not immune to a good romp through drawing rooms and gaming hells, but there usually has to be some distinguishing factor like a really broken hero (see last Thursday’s post) or a bluestocking heroine. Even writers who are doing Very Different Things
The other day, my proclivity for loving really, really broken characters and gleefully watching as an author puts them through the wringer came up in a conversation on Twitter. The context was Jackie Ashenden’s Having Her, in which a hero with a schizophrenic mother and a heroine with a struggling business and virginity issues tumble
The second book of Molly O’Keefe’s Boys of Bishop series, Never Been Kissed (pre-order now for release on July 1st), is an intensely personal journey of two very different people helping each other find love. When the book starts out, the heroine has been kidnapped by pirates. The hero rushes to her rescue, arriving in
Here at Cooking Up Romance, I post a romance novel review with a matching recipe on Mondays and then Thursdays usually mean a brief essay on some topic tangential to my interest in romance like how to find great writers on Twitter and why romance gets so little literary credit. This week though, my brush
As I mentioned last week, I’ve found some wonderful new-to-me writers via Twitter. Among these is Lisa Hendrix, writer of the Immortal Brotherhood series. The series is an interesting conflation of history, fantasy and romance, which are pretty much my three favorite things. Labeling these paranormal romances really doesn’t do them justice, but if paranormal they must
Today I want to talk about Twitter. A few months ago, I had maybe four romance novels on my “to read” list. I pretty much limited myself to my very favorite authors, reading all of their books until I ran out and then scrambling to find a new author’s backlist to pillage. Romance Novels for Feminists
A couple of months ago, I asked my husband if he’d be interested in reading one of my romance novels. Since he’s usually game for pretty much anything and already a genre fiction reader, he agreed. Admittedly, I didn’t expect much. I figured he might read one, get the general gist and then leave me
Recently there has been (another) spate of denigration of romance novels by the male commentariat. Honestly, I don’t click on their links or engage in argument with them. They are trolls and thou shalt not feed them. But I am aware of the articles and the ridiculous claims contained therein because I think if you’re
When Ava Lovelace’s geeky erotica novella The Lumberfox opens, it’s winter in Atlanta and it’s snowing. Hard. And if you’ve ever been anywhere near the South when it decides to snow hard, you pretty much know that we’re, well, ill-equipped to deal. So it’s no surprise when heroine Tara and hero Ryon get into a
