Through more than twenty years of All About Romance’s reviews, AAR’s readers have visited, read our posts, and commented on the reviews, blogs, and message boards. And over the years, as AAR staff, we have gotten to know some of you. However, we would love to get to know all of you better. […]
In all my years of romance reading, the only hero I recall who was described as overweight was Henry Tewskbury-Hampton of Carla Kelly’s delightful vintage Signet regency Miss Billings Treads the Boards.
Over twenty years. […]
A few weeks ago, I selected a book to review that admitted it was a novella, but pretended it was a stand-alone. When I opened it up, the book was fifty seven pages and was about the farthest thing from a stand-alone I could think of. Instead, I think it’s a few chapters the author cut from another book and just… embellished. There was no time to invest in the characters, and instead I was expected to believe they were obsessed enough with each other to go from dreaming of having sex with one another to marriage – in fifty seven pages.
My pet peeve radar went off.
I loathe this. First of all, fifty seven pages is not a novella. It isn’t even a short story. It’s a plot bunny that needs further unpacking. 13,000 words may sound like a lot, and writing that much is arduous, do not get me wrong, […]
The best part of RWA’s annual conference is, for us, getting to talk with authors we love. Elizabeth Kingston’s books get high marks from us so we were excited to ask her what she’s writing next. […]
RIQ: All About Romance is one of the most respected romance-related websites in the world. Can you tell us how it came to be? […]
March is an exciting month for romance writers, as it’s when the Romance Writers of America announces their finalists in the RITA and Golden Heart contests for published books and unpublished manuscripts, respectively, submitted in the fall of the previous year. Excitement builds up over the day of the announcement as writers get calls from the RWA board and readers eagerly watch the RWA site to see if their favorite books made the cut. This year, the finalists were announced on March 21. Award winners will be announced on July 19 at the 2018 RWA National Conference in Denver, Colorado.
Here are the finalists that AAR’s staff read last year:
The title is a play on words from Shakespeare’s Richard II and is the first book in a new series based […]
I’m a lover of documentaries and of the Romance genre, so when buzz started on Twitter that the film Love Between the Covers was available to stream through Amazon, Netflix, and iTunes I had to watch it right away. Love Between the Covers follows five published authors (Beverly Jenkins, Eloisa James, Radclyffe, Susan Donovan, and Celeste Bradley) as well as one aspiring author for three years as they navigate the ins and outs of the Romance world. (Here’s the trailer.)
For those already immersed in Romance, as so many AAR readers are, much of the content of the documentary won’t be new to you. The Romance genre sells big numbers, it is fueled by women who write for women, and the books are as diverse and interesting as the women who are involved in it. I think that the film is really intended for those outside of the Romance community […]
Hope. Escape. Fun. Happiness Something just for me. Taught me about respect. Joy. Taught me that I deserve a happily ever after, too.
I spent the spring and summer of 2016 listening to women about why they read romance novels. I ran a research project that was specifically interested in how women who see themselves as ‘religious’ interacted with the sex in romance novels, but my participants gave me so many gifts beyond that. Many I heard from weren’t even women of faith, they just wanted to tell me how important these books are to them, how vital they are to their lives. (1)
Because for so many women, they are just that: vital.
I talked to women whose entire sexual health education came from Harlequin, because their schools and families and religious spaces never talked about sex and the issues surrounding it. From the books, these women told me, they learned about consent and respect and orgasms. (2)
Are indie erotic romances and erotica no longer welcome in the Barnes & Noble Nook store? Are some of them okay? Apparently, it depends on what day of the week it is.
Last week, several erotic romance authors reported that that Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press had suspended their accounts. Initially, it was reported that the books being removed were those that broke the content policy – that is, erotica about incest, rape, bestiality, necrophilia, or pedophilia. As with any of these breaking news stories, the truth always takes time to bubble to the surface. In other words… That was far from the truth. Author David Gaughran reported that authors of “regular erotica” were being targeted – not just writers of the more … niche … stories.
Hearing from lots of authors who got this email from Nook Press. “Regular” erotica too, apparently, rather than some of the… […]
The cold shower is the romance novel male equivalent of the internal hymen: you see it in books so frequently that you probably don’t notice it anymore, but when you stop to think about it, something’s off. In fact, everything is off. The cold shower, it seems, is just as grounded in reality as the mythical internal hymen.
What is the cold shower? Here are just a few of the many, many examples:
After ogling the heroine Jennifer, the hero Cletus reflects:
A cold shower was in order. And yoga. And then another cold shower. – Beard Science by Penny Reid
After ogling the heroine Lucy, the hero Zack reflects:
He needed a shower. A cold one. – Getting Rid of Bradley by Jennifer Crusie
After ogling the heroine Emma, the hero Connor reflects that if he couldn’t
take a cold shower, he’d have to settle for cold drinks. And maybe he should just pour […]
