A journalist asked four romance authors - Toni Blake, Dianne Castell, Rosemary Laurey and LuAnn Mclane - a host of questions for an article. Probably not the questions I would have asked if I had four up-and-comers in a room but at least this wasn’t the usual sniveling, nasty anti-romance article.  The most interesting Q&A was this - interesting because I’m not sure what answer I would have given but here’s what these talented ladies had to say about what was happening in the romance genre today:

Question: How are romance novels different now from 10 or even five years ago?

Dianne: There are women heroines who are strong, much stronger than in the past.

Rosemary: The day of the 17-year-old virgin is long gone.

LuAnn: These are women with real jobs, and even husbands.

Dianne: Erotica has taken off and sexy is in right now. You can use language that you couldn’t use in the past … and you couldn’t put in the newspaper.

LuAnn: It is much more realistic. You can let your hero talk the way a guy really talks.

Dianne: You have heroes who are in the FBI, the Marines or the Army and they need to be able to talk like those men talk.

Rosemary: There aren’t any of those awful euphemisms for body parts anymore, like ‘granite monolith’ or ‘dew-laden petals of love.’

Toni: Things have come a long way.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 5:52 am and is filed under About Authors, About Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.