originally published in August of 2000 This feature grew out of Laurie Gold’s 1997 review of a 1997 romance, A Well Pleasured Lady by Christina Dodd, and a subsequent column she wrote about it and other issues related to Political Correctness. A quickie from Judith Ivory/Judy Cuevas – about politically correct writing (August 1997) A…
originally published on March 23, 2009 One of the perennial favorite topics around AAR is the lack of historical accuracy in today’s historical romances. Still, there is what AAR readers want and then what the rest of the reading world wants – at least according to some publishers. I’m hearing from certain writer friends who…
A Quickie with Kay Mussell originally published in November, 1997 Kay Mussell is a scholar at American University. She is a long-time reader of my column, but first came to my attention when I read Jayne Ann Krentz’s Dangerous Men & Adventurous Women, which is a series of essays written by romance novelists about the…
originally published March 1, 2001 (many of the links in this post have been lost to history) To all the winners in our fifth annual readers’ poll, congratulations and continued success! With nearly 30 categories polled, the AAR Reader Awards ballot is quite comprehensive; readers must study the ballot and be prepared with details on…
(originally published in 2002) The Harem by Ellen Micheletti Simply defined, a harem is the area in a household where the women of the family live. But in romantic imagination, it is so much more. For many years movies, books and paintings have romanticized the harem. What a life. You ate delicious food, wore…
(originally published in August of 1997) We asked author Patricia Gaffney, author of the Wyckerley trilogy and the upcoming Wild at Heart for her thoughts on reader criticism. Here is what she had to say: Show me a writer who says she enjoys reader criticism, and I’ll show you somebody whose pants are on fire….
Adele Ashworth on her Virgin Widow I’ve been reading romance novels for a long time. A long time. Now, it’s true that for the first twenty-five years or so of my personal romance reading, there wasn’t any place for discussion of what I liked and disliked as there is now on the Internet. I simply…
In more than one of my columns, I’ve talked about how broadly the definition of a romance novel should be extended. Some romances read to me like historical, epic fiction, others as suspense novels with some romance thrown in for good measure. In some cases the author is truly trying to write a romance but…
published on June 9th, 2009 Three of AAR’s publishers are buzzing – literally – about Bound by Your Touch, Meredith Duran’s new historical novel to be released at the end of June. Here’s what Blythe had to say: “For me, it’s all about the hero – he was completely delicious. The book is just plain…
Joanna Bourne & Sherry Thomas published on June 26, 2008 With The Spymaster’s Lady and Private Arrangements these new authors exploded (almost literally considering the volume of the online buzz) onto the scene by delivering compulsively readable and meaty historical romance with complex, flawed characters – the kind of characters we see all too…
End of content
End of content