romance genre – Page 2

Unrealistic expectations

Today I was chatting with a woman I know, and she pulled out that old chestnut about romance novels giving women unrealistic expectations in their relationships. It kind of came out of left field, and I was too taken aback to be very convincing in the ensuing discussion. But of course NOW the responses are flying fast and thick in my mind.

The core of the argument, of course, is that I believe most women can be trusted to tell fantasy from reality, and if a few can’t, that’s not the fault of romance novels. But that’s not quite snappy enough! Right now, my favorite comeback is, “If a woman starts to expect that she can have a great relationship with someone she has wonderful chemistry with, who respects her and treats her well, I don’t see what’s so bad about that.”

What’s your response to the “unrealistic expectations” comment?

You know I can tie anything back to Star Trek

Hi all! So…that wrist injury turned out to be a bit worse than I thought, and I’ve been working on a new book proposal, and what with one thing and another I’ve been AWOL from this here blog for a while, haven’t I? Pretty soon I’ll do an update post with links and book news and all that, but right now there’s something I want to talk to you about, and that’s beta heroes.

I love beta heroes. I love alpha heroes too, of course, but beta heroes have a special place in my heart. And two things today really brought home to me why (or part of why, anyway–there are so many reasons!).

1. I am reading Meredith Duran’s Wicked Becomes You. I am about halfway through and I love it, as I have loved all her previous books. I got to the part where the hero tells the heroine, “In this world, there is nothing more wicked than a woman who is unafraid to acknowledge what she wants.” And unexpectedly I found myself tearing up at the power of that statement, of that whole scene.

2. I read this blog post by a woman whose five-year-old son dressed up as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween and got shamed by other mothers at school. She writes, “I hate[…]that my baby has to be so brave if he wants to be Daphne for Halloween.”

It’s that word, “brave.” Because men are supposed to be strong, right? Men are supposed to be confident. Men are supposed to acknowledge what they want all over the place. But the thing is, they are only supposed to want certain things. And a guy saying that he wants to let a woman take charge, or stay in middle management for the rest of his life, or avoid a fight—that guy immediately gets hit with a whole lot of shame. Girls have a hard time if they’re too alpha (it’s usually called “bossy” for them, of course), and guys have a hard time if they’re too beta.

But “alpha” doesn’t mean “strong.” It means “dominant.” Those are different things. Sure, being good at being dominant is a form of strength (and it’s hot!) but being good at anything is a form of strength. “Beta” doesn’t mean “weak,” either. It just means not needing or wanting to be in charge. It’s a different personality type, that’s all.

Spock, for example, is a “beta.” He doesn’t want Captain Kirk’s command. That doesn’t mean he’s wimpy.

But a lot of people forget that. So for a hero to openly be beta is actually really, really brave. For a guy to to defy expectations, to be willing to be seen as weak or vulnerable, to be himself and to be unafraid to say what he wants from life, takes a heck of a lot of courage and strength. And yeah, that’s hot.

Angry heroines, part 2/2

As promised in the first part of this post, ten of my favorite angry heroines. Warning: mild spoilers for all these books!

1. Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It meant so much to me that Mary was a bratty, unattractive little kid and she still got to blossom and be a heroine. Way too many classic children’s book heroines are sweet, self-sacrificing, and beautiful even at age 8. I loved A Little Princess too, don’t get me wrong, but The Secret Garden had a special place in my heart.

2. Beth Ellen from The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh. Beth Ellen SEEMS like a sweet little girl. Her grandmother always tells her it’s important to be ladylike, and she listens. But underneath, her feelings are sometimes different and disturbing.

This is by the author of Harriet the Spy and all the Harriet characters make appearances. It’s a brilliant, brilliant book and the ending is ridiculously satisfying. I read this book over and over again as a kid.

3. Sophy from Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I love love LOVE the romance in this book. Howl is a vain, cowardly wizard who’s really nice and charming, and Sophy is a responsible oldest sister (but her sisters are nice, not awful! and even her “wicked” stepmother gets a fair shake) who’s transformed into an old woman. She gets a job as Howl’s cleaning lady and yells at him a lot. It’s really quirky and sweet and I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of beta heroes.

4. Jessi from Kyle XY. (N.B. The link goes to Season One but Jessi doesn’t show up till Season Two.) I love very nearly everything about this show. It’s a surprisingly naturalistic yet dynamic portrayal of family life, it’s heartwarming and wholesome without ever being saccharin, and the plot is driven forward naturally by believable character motivation and conflict, and people COMMUNICATE with each other. On a shallower note, this show introduced me to my current top celebrity crush, Nicholas Lea.

But one thing that stands out to me is the range of well-developed female characters and the way all of them, even the super-extra-nice ones, get to express anger and stand up for themselves.

I love ALL the women on this show, every last one of them, but I think my favorite is Jessi. Jessi came out of a pod at age 16 (it’s a sci-fi teen drama) and has to learn how to be a teenage girl. She’s not a naturally empathetic person, and she doesn’t have a very nice early life. She tries, and tries, but she doesn’t quite get how she’s supposed to behave, and why. And she’s angry.

5. Agent Lisbon from The Mentalist. She struck such a chord with me from the moment she walked onscreen in the pilot. Finally, a woman who cares deeply about her job, who takes things seriously and follows the rules and who isn’t made fun of for it. Her issues with intimacy and relationships are never, ever minimized by the show. She’s tough and kickass with angsty backstory and a lot of buried anger starting from her childhood and extending into all the awful things she sees everyday running a California Bureau of Investigation homicide unit, plus she has a great smile and sense of humor and she looks out for her team. She’s wonderful.

6. Harriet Vane from the Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L. Sayers. What can you even say about the romance between Harriet and Peter? It’s SO GREAT. And Harriet’s resentment at her obligation to Peter, his acceptance and respect for that anger, and her learning to deal with it and make peace with it without surrendering her independence and selfhood, is one of my very favorite things about it. There’s this bit in Gaudy Night where she says “I only know that if I once gave way to Peter, I should go up like straw.” And her friend asks, “Has he ever used it against you?” And he hasn’t. ♥

7. Agnes from Agnes and the Hitman by Bob Mayer and Jennifer Crusie. I loved this book. Agnes has anger management issues. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a romance heroine with honest-to-God anger management issues before, and I was thrilled. Is Agnes more violent than I was personally comfortable with? Yes. But I have read so, so many romances where the hero goes into black uncontrollable rages from which only the heroine can talk him down, and I wanted a heroine to be allowed to do the same, and not be judged. Plus, everyone in this book is incredibly charming and there are flamingos and a mob wedding and really, what’s not to love?

8. Mary Wollstonecraft from Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Perhaps this is cheating a little since it’s technically a biography, but it’s a biography written by her husband after her death, and he loves and admires her so much. it’s obvious how brilliant and brave and amazing he thought she was–he praises her to the skies on every page–but he still portrays her as a full person, not as some sweet cardboard cutout (and he’s not even visibly jealous of her previous relationships!). It’s incredibly romantic.

In the first chapter he’s talking about her childhood and he says, “Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have called ‘a very good hater.’ In some instance of passion exercised by her father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of her emotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony.”

9. Lydia from The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase. This may be my favorite Loretta Chase, although it’s a tough competition. Lydia is just so angry, and so determined to maintain her independence, and so afraid of losing face because her tough image is the only protection she has in a world that doesn’t much like independent women. Plus, she’s a girl reporter! I LOVE girl reporters.

10. Lily Sharpe in Fall from Grace by Megan Chance. ALL of Megan Chance’s heroines are wonderful and angry, but Lily may be my favorite. Adopted by the outlaws that killed her parents (it’s a Western), she’s vowed her entire life to get her revenge and escape to live the life she should have had as a respectable woman. And she’s not going to let her marriage to the gang leader’s son stop her, even though she might actually love him.

This book is amazing. I love the romance between Lily and Texas as they gradually come to realize the lies they’ve believed about themselves, each other, and their relationship. At the start of the book, Lily has run away and Texas comes after her. She’s living in a boarding house and she’s bought two bonnets. Texas just can’t see Lily, his gun-toting Lily, wearing a bonnet. She tells him it was just a cover and leaves the hats behind without a backward glance, but Texas can’t get them out of his head. Gradually he comes to understand what the bonnets meant to Lily, the entire life she’d been dreaming of without his knowing, and it’s just…I swooned. Because he really, really wants to understand her, and he figures it out no matter how hard she tries to keep herself hidden.

I realize I’ve strayed off the track of her anger, but…she tries to kill him. Twice. How often do you see that in a romance?

Tell me about your favorite angry heroines!

Angry heroines, part 1/2

There’s been a really interesting conversation going around about “unlikeable” heroines. I think it started over at Dear Author, and just yesterday a great post by Tracy Grant went up at History Hoydens. There was a quote in that that got me thinking:

“But more seriously, I think it [why anti-heroines are so intriguing] is in large part that they often are characters who break rules and defy conventions. That’s part of the appeal of anti-heroes as well, but I think there’s something particularly interesting about women who defy conventions in an historical setting in which there are so many restrictions on a woman’s role.”

This conversation feels especially relevant to me because Serena, the heroine of my next book, Lily Among Thorns, could potentially be considered an “unlikeable heroine.” I like her a lot, of course, but she’s prickly and defensive and not always fair, because she’s had a hard life and been treated badly by a lot of people and she’s angry. It seems like fairly often, that’s what “unlikeable” boils down to–angry.

I’m a pretty angry person. I’m also a happy person, and I think a compassionate one, but the compassion is partly something I’ve worked on and developed because it’s important to me, not necessarily something that came naturally to me as a kid. My natural response to a lot of things is anger, and I’ve always felt guilty and ashamed of that, because girls aren’t supposed to be angry. Or at least, girls aren’t supposed to express anger. But there’s a William Blake poem my mom used to quote to me growing up:

“I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath; my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not; my wrath did grow.”

I’ve had this experience so many times–I’ll be angry at a friend of mine for something stupid, something little, but I won’t want to tell them for fear of being a bitch or hurting their feelings, I’ll think, “I shouldn’t care about this, I’ll just wait and it’ll pass.” Sometimes that works, but sometimes it doesn’t. When I was younger, I lost a couple of friendships that way, because I didn’t say anything and didn’t say anything until the anger turned into resentment and after a while, that was all I could feel about that person.

In recent years I’ve gotten better about bringing something up (as tactfully and kindly as I can figure out how to do!) if it continues to bother me after a few days, but it’s still hard for me. I’m still afraid to do it, and I still feel so guilty for wanting to, for being unable to simply close the door on my anger and make it go away.

But if you don’t express anger, it doesn’t magically go away. It grows until it consumes you. If you aren’t allowed to express it, well. So many unlikeable heroines, anti-heroines, and villainesses come down to that–they’re angry, and their anger has come, in some way, to define them.

That is Becky Sharp’s real crime, isn’t it? That she had a tough childhood, that no one ever protected her or took care of her, and her response to that is to put herself first, to become hard–in contrast to Amelia, who’s compared to a “flower that smells the sweeter for being crushed.”

Villainesses like Milady or Becky Sharp, it seems like, accept that they can’t openly express their anger, so they express it in disturbing, hidden ways, through manipulation, passive aggression, sugar-coated insults, lies, and in some cases, violence and murder. It’s not healthy or admirable, but I’ll admit to an instinctive sympathy. I like reading about it.

But what I love even more is the unlikeable heroine, because often she does express her anger. Like Tracy Grant says, she breaks the rules, defies convention, and accepts the consequences. She insists on being true to who she is, and not pretending to feel differently.

And what I love even more than that is the hero who responds to that, who genuinely respects and likes the heroine’s anger. Sure, it’s a transparent fantasy of love and acceptance, but isn’t that what romance novels are for sometimes?

Are you comfortable expressing anger? How do you feel about angry female characters? And do you have any flaws (or things that could be considered flaws, anyway) that you like to see mirrored in romance heroines?

(I’m working on Part 2 of this post right now, in the form of a list of my favorite angry heroines. I can’t wait to hear about yours!)

Edit: Part 2 is here.

Her bosom swelled

Penultimate guest blog! I did a Q&A with Gerri Russell over at the Chatelaines blog today. I talk about my writing process, the embarrassing yet hilarious things I wrote in high school, and what I do in my free time. And I’m giving away another book in the comments. Here’s a sample:

GR: What influenced you to write about Regency England?

RL: I’ve always been a fan of romance in the comedy of manners tradition. Which mostly translates to “I love banter,” and Regency romance usually has plenty of that. I imprinted on the era early: my mother read me the complete works of Jane Austen in fifth grade, and a friend loaned me my first Georgette Heyer when I was thirteen. We made dozens of trips to the bookstore to buy Regency romances together over the next four years and even exchanged in-character letters between Regency debutante friends like the ones in Sorcery and Cecelia. (I’m sure they were mostly awful, but we thought they were brilliant and hilarious. I remember in one of our favorite scenes, her character’s hero opened his snuffbox with a delicate flick of his wrist–very common in old-skool Regencies–and accidentally spilled snuff all over her dress.) So it’s probably not surprising that it’s what I started writing. Plus, I think the clothes are sexy.

Check it out!

That “delicate flick of his wrist” thing was a running joke with us, actually. We had a whole series of them, but right now the only other one I can remember was we would say “Her bosom swelled” (another common sentence in old-skool Regency romances) and then make gestures like our breasts were exploding. And then laugh really hard. We were a sophisticated lot.

Tell me about an in-joke you and your friends had when you were a kid. Do you still think it’s funny?

Contest and other news!

Hi all! In honor of my first book (which will hit shelves in just over three weeks!) I’m running a contest at my site! I’ll be giving away five signed copies of In for a Penny, and one lucky winner will get my Regency Starter Pack—10 of my favorite books! This is an awesome prize, if I do say so myself, so get over there and enter!

I’ve also got a preliminary schedule for my blog tour and signings up on my site index—more dates coming soon! But mark your calendars, my first signing will be at Third Place Books (in Lake Forest Park, WA) on April 2nd at 6:30PM! It’s going to be awesome and you should all come.

And so this post doesn’t consist entirely of shameless self-promotion, here’s a really interesting post about female sexuality in romance from Dear Author (which is a couple weeks old now, so maybe you’ve all read it already, but if you haven’t, do it now):

So going back to the question of whether these views mirror some biological or psychological or historical imperative, even if all that were true, I don’t think it’s the critical issue. For me, the critical issue is that as a society we continue to value a woman’s sexual status and we give value to women (or take it away) based on this status.

Also, my critique partner Susan Wilbanks is doing a really cool series on how to use British titles and courtesy titles, using examples from the Peter Wimsey books and the Duke of Wellington’s family: “Of Wimseys and Wellesleys“! Since title errors pull me out of a story faster than a speeding bullet, I’m pretty excited about this. Especially since I use the Wimsey family to remember lots of the rules myself (Gaudy Night is one of my top romances EVER).

“Maybe they didn’t have black people back then.”

It’s International Blog Against Racism Week, and it FINALLY motivated me to do something I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time: research people of color in my era and setting of choice, Regency England.

I’ve written three manuscripts and I’m starting a fourth, and guess what? I haven’t written a single black character, or Indian character, or Egyptian character, or even a Jewish character (and I’m Jewish myself). I haven’t written a single character who isn’t white and Christian. Not even a minor character or an extra in a crowd scene, unless you count having my heroine bank with Rothschild that one time.

Why is that? Well, the most obvious, easy answer is that the minority populations of England weren’t as large during the early nineteenth century as they are today. Many of the big waves of immigration from different areas of the Empire hadn’t happened yet. And that’s true. But I think there are three factors that are far more important than that one:

1) My default is white. I wish this wasn’t true, but it is. If I have to describe a random housemaid or the heroine’s friend from finishing school or a sailor on the docks or a doctor or a land agent or a waitress or any of the huge cast of supporting characters that are inevitably created for any novel, it doesn’t occur to me unless I consciously think about it that THEY COULD BE A PERSON OF COLOR.

Even Victorian Thackeray did better than that in his historical novels–just off the top of my head, there was an African page boy in History of Henry Esmond and a mixed-race student at Miss Pinkerton’s in Vanity Fair. (Of course, both of those portrayals were racist, but that’s hardly an excuse for my own whitewashing.) English society in 1815 was a lot more homogenous than it is now, but it was also a lot less homogenous than I’ve depicted it in my books.

Why do I say “supporting characters” up there? Because there’s no way I know enough about nineteenth-century non-white-British cultures to write a story from the point of view of someone from one of those cultures. No way at all. Which leads me to:

2) I don’t write characters of color because I don’t have the knowledge base to write historical characters of color well, to give them the detail and the verisimilitude and the voice and life that every character needs.

Research for writing historical novels is an on-going process; no matter how many books I’ve read or how much I think I know about the Regency, every time I sit down to write I realize there’s another gaping hole in my information. When is a cavalry officer allowed to wear his uniform off-duty? I asked myself a few days ago, and I had no idea. I know quite a lot about historical accounting and poaching and new farming methods in Norfolk thanks to In for a Penny, and right now I’m busy researching bluestockings and the internal workings of the Whig party for my next book, but when the time comes to write the next book I’ll have to do a whole new set of research.

Since ALL of my information about the time period is acquired from books and fellow research geeks, and I don’t have general knowledge based in life experience the way I do about the modern world, I know nothing about Regency communities of color because…

I’ve never researched Regency communities of color. Because I never really thought about it, and I can get away with never thinking about it.

3) Writing characters of color is scary, because if you do it wrong people might get upset. If you just don’t write them, it is hard for people to get upset at you, because you blend in with all the other books that give the impression that the entire world is white.

I’m not happy writing books set in the All-White World anymore. So:

Here are some awesome Regency-set books written by white people that include major characters of color, as inspiration and example:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. The character in question is the wonderful Stephen Black, an extremely competent butler who, to his great dismay, becomes the favorite friend of a cruel and capricious fairy ruler. Stephen is awesomely realized, and oh yeah, he saves England in the end.

Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series includes a variety of characters from different parts of the world (in particular, China and Africa).

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson. This one is actually set in the US in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War, but it’s so great I included it anyway. It’s about a little boy who gradually realizes that he is a slave and that his entire upbringing is an experiment by Enlightenment philosophers and scientists to determine whether Africans are inferior to Europeans. It’s brilliant and inventive and the historical voice is amazing.

Here are the research books I just ordered:

Black London: Life Before Emancipation, by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina. “Alongside migrants from all over Europe, Georgian London supported a community of more than 10,000 blacks. Theirs is the story that Ms. Gerzina, who teaches at Vassar College, tells with great clarity.” – New York Times Book Review

Immigration, ethnicity, and racism in Britain: 1815-1945, by Panikos Panayi.

And here are the ones I put on my wishlist:

Black Experience and the Empire.
Black Writers in Britain: 1760-1890.
Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830. Yes, I’m a geek, I can’t help it! Too bad textbooks like this are so expensive.
Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History.

If anyone can recommend good Regency romances with characters of color and/or good research reading on the subject, please do!

And here are some blog posts that brought home to me the importance of creating a multicultural world in my stories. They’re about science fiction and fantasy because I read a lot of geeky blogs, but I think the principle is the same.

This one is about Uhura in the new Star Trek movie. I’ve always found it really, really difficult to describe or articulate how this invisibility feels, how it affects you and the way that you view and experience media. I remember someone posted a one page article or somesuch wherein all of the actors in STXI had just one little soundbyte type quotation about their character and their feelings about the original version. John Cho’s was him noting that his reaction to Sulu was essentially: “OMG AN ASIAN GUY IS ON TV.”

This one is a moving essay about the Earthsea trilogy and how it felt to the author to finally read a fantasy story with characters of color in it. Seriously, read this. I cried. But I remember Dad saying, how come you never see anybody like that in the stories you like? And I remember answering, maybe they didn’t have black people back then. He said there’s always been black people. I said but black people can’t be wizards and space people and they can’t fight evil, so they can’t be in the story.

Musings on Race in Fantasy or: Why Ron Weasley isn’t Black. This poster rambles a bit, but he makes some points that resonated with me, as a white author. No writer would dream of suggesting that a black person couldn’t be beautiful, but our “generic” idea of beauty is pale and blonde, just like our “generic” idea of boyish charm is a freckly redhead and our “generic” idea of a wise man is a white guy with a long beard and a pointed nose.

I want to change, and I’m going to try. I know I’ll probably make a lot of mistakes, but I think that’s better than staying where I am, and hopefully, when I do mess up, I’ll be able to apologize, think about it, and do better next time.