Today I was sitting with my daughter, desperately looking for coffee, when she asked me a question I thought was relevant. “Mom, why do you write kissy books?” By kissy books she means romance, obviously. She’s eight and a half, and as far as she’s concerned anything related to romance or kissing is purely anathema. Especially, and this is important, if boys are involved.
I thought about this one for a long while. Why do I write romance? It’s a good question. I tried to explain to my Spawn about the romance market, but I promise you she didn’t care. Not even a little bit. I tried to explain how even books in other genres, aimed at men, usually have to have some romantic component if they want to sell. Not buying it.
I used to write strictly non-romance speculative fiction. I had a lot of negative ideas about the romance genre, mostly from the days when my mother hid her romance novels under the couch in shame. To be fair, certain tropes and plots were popular in the genre at the time and they definitely weren’t the kind of thing anyone would want their kids absorbing.
The genre has mostly recovered from those dark days, and honestly they were reflective of the times we were in anyway. Romance novelists weren’t the only ones with questionable ideas about consent. But romance, as a genre, is about so much more than just sex, courtship, and looking for marriage.
When I was writing strictly spec fic, I had a beta reader who sat me down for a serious talk. She said, “Jaye, you’re not writing horror. It’s an element to what you’re writing, but that’s not the point of this book. You’re writing romance, you just don’t know it.”
I was certainly surprised to see it, given that there was no happy ending in sight for anyone in this book and the horror was pretty front-and-center. Think buckets of blood, terrible situations, that kind of thing.[1] I respected this reader, because she knew what she was talking about, and I decided to look into the modern romance genre. I ordered a box of romance reads from Book Riot, did some poking around on the RWA’s website, and lo and behold my friend was right.
I love speculative fiction – horror, science fiction, fantasy, whatever. What I love about it, though, is the characters and how they interact with each other in these different settings. The worlds themselves are of interest, but only insofar as they affect the characters. Start talking to me about how your warp drive works and I will go make myself a martini. Talk to me about how the warp drive affects the people on the ship, and I’m interested.
I’m a great big hermit, and I avoid human contact like plague, but when it comes to study or entertainment, it’s all about the people.
I sat down and read the books in my crate. They were books by K. J. Charles (Think of England), Beverly Johnson (Forbidden), and one other book whose title and author I can’t remember. Each one of them changed my mind completely and had a profound effect on my attitude about this genre.
The first one I read was Think of England. I figured I’d start with that. The characters were gay, so at least I’d have that connection to them, and it was a historical set in an era I knew close to nothing about. It also promised murder, and I do prefer at least some mayhem in my entertainment.
The next was Forbidden. I knew I stood a good chance at enjoying this one, because it covered an era I was at least a little bit interested in and talked about a population the history books rarely covered. Once again, I was blown away by how engrossing this book was. When I started the project, I thought romance was light and mindless. These two books showed me how flawed my assumptions were. It was like going in expecting an airy salad and getting a solid, stick-to-your-ribs stew.
The third and final book I expected to loathe. I can’t remember the name of the book or the author at this point, and I read the book more because I felt I had to than because I wanted to. I mean, I’d paid for it, right? It was about two wealthy, privileged white people running around doing privileged things. And I remember thinking, who cares, I hope they both fall into a gorge.
This author, whoever they were, blew me away. I went into this book expecting to hate this couple. Hell, I did hate this couple, and this author painted them with so much sympathy and kindness that I was moved to tears.
I still write spec fic, sometimes. After this box from Book Riot helped to destroy this bias in my mind, I’ve completely embraced romance and I don’t think I’ll ever look back.
I still have my preferences, obviously. I like romantic suspense, because I will always like a certain amount of mayhem in my entertainment. I like historicals, because I was raised by two history majors and it just seems natural. I like paranormals, but not all of them. I like some contemporary, I like sci-fi… you get the picture. I almost always buy whichever LGBTQ+ romance is on my BookBub list.
I’ll take just about any rec that comes up, because sometimes something completely unexpected happens and I find a new favorite I never would have grabbed on my own.
So I guess the answer to my Spawn is I write romance because I like focusing on the characters. It’s the only genre that lets me focus that much on the characters and still have them doing other things, like solving mysteries and saving kingdoms or blowing up space stations. And if they get a little “kissy” here and there, that’s just fine by me.
[1] No, it has not been published, and no, it will not be published. It will never see the light of day, nor should it.