We listen to you, we really do. And we’ve noticed that you, along with several of our reviewers, aren’t all that happy with most – not all, but most – of the historical romance that’s been published in the past year or so. Using our Power Search feature, we looked at all the Historical Romance reviews we’ve written in 2019. We’ve given out 19 As, 47 Bs, 21 Cs, 13 Ds, and 2 Fs.
Getting Cs, Ds, and Fs were several authors we’ve reviewed positively in the past: Victoria Alexander, Lorraine Heath, Madeline Hunter, Anne Gracie, Marguerite Kaye, and Laura Lee Guhrke to name a few. Several of the DIKs are debut books are are by lesser-known authors.
So, is there a problem with historical romance right now? And, if so, what is it?
I think most of the problems I’ve seen in historical romances could be dealt with by good enough writing or twists on the basic premise/tropes. Unfortunately, this doesn’t usually happen. Perhaps there are enough readers who don’t care about historical accuracy, like their heroines to have modern mindsets, and so on.
Right now I am slogging through a historical romance by an author who is new to me but not new to HR, and if I hadn’t requested this book for review, I would have stopped reading it a long time ago. With this book, I feel like the author is going for the usual tropes. The hero is hot, rich, titled and bored with life, so he carouses and gambles and so on, while the heroine is determined she will never marry, but it’s okay if he ruins her (the possibility of pregnancy never crosses anyone’s mind) and it’s just stultifying so far because there is nothing. new. here. at. all. Not the characters, not the p[ot, not the style. I need *something* fresh, otherwise reading the story will be like chewing a piece of gum for the tenth time.
Agree 100% on this. Regardless of whether readers care about historical accuracy or not, bad writing and unimaginative plots are bad and unimaginative – and HR seems to have more of that floating about than ever.
Exactly what I was about to post. HR doesn’t have a quality problem, it has a research and editing problem.
I have to disagree there, Lisa. It has a problem with the quality of research and editing as well as problems with the quality of writing, storytelling, plotting and too many authors trying to shoe-horn in issues that, as Annelie says, further down the thread, may play well to a comtemporary audience, but which don’t fit in stories set in the 19th century because our modern PC attitude just didn’t exist. So yes, it’s a quality problem, IMO, and a serious one.
Eh, I’ll maintain that all of these issues nest into one another. Better editors make better writers. Better editors make for more original plots. Research begets plots that fit into an era.
Oh, I’m not arguing that it’s a wide-reaching problem, but it’s a problem of quality across the board from research to plots to writing.
I agree with Marian, much of the writing is just dull. There seems to be a distinct lack of imagination in plots, characters, tropes in general. I’ve been feeling this for a couple of years.
But, I think it goes deeper than that. I think that with the advent of the #MeToo movement, your typical rake isn’t as charming as he might once have been. Perhaps writers are struggling to come up with alpha males who aren’t manwhores, who don’t insist on the heroine’s sexual capitulation, who like and respect women, and who want an actual relationship. Just as bodice rippers largely fell out of favor because of the way they treated female characters, I think something similar might be happening now. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me this new awareness is contributing in a very real way to stories that were once generally meant to be escapist fare.
I think that’s true. AND I think a good author should be able to resolve that tension.
Agreed.
One difficulty I have with the generic rake in historical romance is that he’s not given much if any reason for his choice of lifestyle. In Mary Jo Putney’s The Rake, there was a good reason the hero was an alcoholic, and I sympathized with him.
But in the HR I’m reading now, the hero drinks, gambles and has indiscriminate sex because he’s bored. Am I supposed to like him for this? The heroine had better be prepared to entertain him 24/7, because if he’s bored in the future, he might turn to the booze and the women again.
Sometimes I feel authors just pin the rake label on the hero and hope that’s enough to make him interesting. It’s not. Develop him beyond this, show why he’s a dissolute scoundrel (and why he stops being one) and think about how to make him even a little bit different from the million other hot, rich, titled rakes out there.
A big fat YES to that. (But you knew I was going to say that!)
We’ve touched on possible reasons in a few recent discussions on reviews and blog posts, and I looked them up in anticipation of this question!
Dabney said this (on my reivew of Caroline Linden’s When the Marquess Was Mine
I feel as if many historical romance authors are actually writing LESS interesting characters because they are trying to write characters with a very similar set of virtues. I feel as if every lead increasingly has to be working for social justice, committed to sexual equality, suspicious of wealth/privilege, and/or interested in overturning social norms. I’m behind all those values in theory but I feel as though there’s a flattening of personas that’s accompanying this trend.
And a comment by “Anonymous” in the same thread said:
It’s particularly frustrating because I think it’s totally possible to write books about historical progressives that are also good books and good romances (and I’d love to read them)… but there’s too much calculation and head in these, not enough heart. The authors aren’t really feeling it, and it shows. (Also, trying to do this without violating romance norms works against them, I suspect, particularly with the heroines..)
On the current trend for feminist heroines who have to make the hero give up something for her in order to triumph, Chrisreader said:
it’s like the flip side of the “old school” romances where the women were subjugated by the men. It’s not romantic to me when one partner, no matter the gender, has to turn into a martyr for the relationship to work.
And elaines, on a recent TheAsk – mentions the number of heroines who are 21st century #metoo girls dressed up in corsets
I’m not quoting those because I don’ t have answers myself, I’m doing it because they’ve all given voice to the thoughts I’ve been having about what’s always been my favourite genre. Wallpaper historicals (with contemporary characters in period dress) are nothing new, but it seems to me now that pretty much every HR has to have a mystery plot tagged on, or as is happening more and more frequently now, a heroine who runs an orphanage/home for abused women/home for “loose women” or is a would be scientist/doctor/someother profession barred to women at the time. I don’t and have never disputed the existence of women doing any of those things (in fact, there’s an exhibition on in London right now dedicated to 18th century female entrepeneurs) – it’s that they’re becoming as ubiquitous as the ducal hero and are rarely – if ever – shown doing something that bears out the things the reader is told she is good at.
I also suggest that part of the problem is the pressure I suspect many authors are under to put out more than one book a year. Historical romance isn’t like a contemporary or fantasy romance; they require more research and, even more importantly, the acquisition of a certain mindset which is able to understand and accept the social mores of the time being written about; that detailed understanding is what, IMO, enables the best HR authors to bend the rules subtly so as to allow their protagonists to spend time together at periods in history when it wasn’t at all the done thing for young men and women to be alone together. And sometimes, that takes more time to achieve than the time allowed an author being asked to put out two or three books a year. (I realise that this isn’t limited to HR; I’m just saying it has more of an effect because of the necessity for more detailed research than in some other genres.)
I’ll stop there and hope there will be lots more thoughts on this. Thanks for asking a question which has been bugging me for the last two years!!
One reason I’m tired of the “heroine runs a shelter” trope is because, when I see this coming, the following will apply :
– the heroine will have a modern-day approach towards sex work or domestic abuse
– the heroine will never make mistakes or harmful assumptions when helping ex-prostitutes or battered wives
– the wives will not second-guess themselves or try to get back together with their husbands, and likewise the ex-prostitutes are fine with their new circumstances. Sometimes the ex-prostitutes give the heroine tips on dressing in a sexy way and attracting a man, like a group of sorority sisters getting together for a makeover
– everyone whom the heroine saves is completely devoted and loyal to her
The problem isn’t the heroine running an orphanage or shelter, it’s when this is portrayed in a flat, generic and completely predictable way.
I’m also tired of historical heroines who talk about equal rights for women but who happily go along with whatever double standards the heroes have. Talk about anachronistic faux feminism.
Yep, seen that one many times.
(and this tees me off because I’m so, so tired of sex worker characters being treated as a prop in HR. Give me sex worker heroines who aren’t ashamed of their pasts! Give me dimensional sex workers rolling their eyes at the heroine! )
Out of curiosity, do you, Caz, or anyone else, know if historical romances are profitable right now given what seems to be some widespread ire from readers? I know that I don’t purchase very many anymore. I’m wondering if they are taking a hit now based on all the criticism posted here.
I’m afraid I don’t have any figures at all – being on the other side of the pond, the romance market is very different over here (skewed to Chick Lit and Women’s Fiction). But if anyone – authors, publishers – reading this with relevant information would care to email me anonymously I’d be happy to share it here.
Well, if you look at most historical romance authors–here’s Sarah MacLean, for example–her newer books are significantly less popular than her older titles. I see that for many authors.
You’re incorrect. MacLean’s most recent book was higher on the USA Today bestseller list than any other she’s published.
I understand that. I was simply referring to Amazon stars which are a terrible metric but the only one I have.
Do you meant the same Amazon where her most recent book is rated 4.5 stars?
I was looking at number of reviews plus stars, not just stars. But, as I’ve said, it’s a dumb metric to use and I worded it poorly. MacLean is justifiably a best-selling author–she is in fact praised several times in this thread. I don’t mean to imply she’s not a success–she is and I personally love that. (The day she took on the NYT is still one of my favorites ever in Romancelandia.) Her books usually are well-reviewed here as well.
More recent books do tend to have less reviews. I’m glad you admit it’s a ridiculous metric. Now can we talk about how this entire thread is ridiculous? Historical romance doesn’t have a quality issue. AAR has a racism issue.
I’ve been reading Ibram X. Kendi lately and thinking a lot about racism and what it is. I can see ways in which AAR has been racist and ways in which we have not. Certainly, in what we review and highlight, we are working to bring books by diverse authors to our readership in a deliberate way. I’m sure we can do better and we will continue to work to do so.
Today is a good day to start. You can begin by addressing the barely veiled white supremacy in most of these comments. BIPOC people have always existed. LGBTQIAP+ people have always existed. Non-Christians have always existed (and for longer than Christians). Disabled people have always existed. Sometimes people are more than one of those things. Sometimes they were wealthy. Sometimes they were aristocrats or even queens of England. And they definitely all had love stories. The historical rules of society people are waving around in this thread wouldn’t exist of people weren’t already doing the things they prescribed against. Women, BIPOC, LGBTQIAP+ people, disabled people, non-Christian people have been resisting and fighting are throughout history and to erase that is what is historically inaccurate.
You are, as is all who comment here, entitled to express yourself although we typically do not publish personal attacks in the comments. As anyone who has followed me for the past ten years knows, I am deeply committed to the First Amendment. The [email protected] column is a place where readers and AAR staff discuss something of interest to them and, as we can see in this thread, the opinions expressed are varied and decidedly non-monolithic. As Publisher, I’m highly disinclined to police the opinions of our readers especially given we asked them to express them.
Tired: do you realize that most of the discussion on this entry is about white heroines behaving anachronistically in the average Dare/McLean and not poc, queer, disabled or non-Christian heroines and heroes existing in the aristocracy or romance in general? Or did you come to this argument because of bad faith readings of the post in a Twitter discussion?
There’s still a fair amount of discussion in the comments about it being unrealistic to have marginalised people in a historical romance novel without having those characters be completely miserable, even though marginalised people have fallen in love and carved out fulfilling lives for themselves despite external oppression since the beginning of time. Tired is more than justified in responding to that.
I’ve seen praise for people who write diversely on the post. KJ Charles and Courtney Milan, in spite of the bashing Milan receives downstream of this comment, also had some positive notices for their work and for writing diversely in this thread. Several commenters mentioned they enjoy diverse romance. The commentary combines a lot of opinions from a lot of people and while it’s fair to single out some of the commentary as racist, the majority of the conversation centers around crusading white dogooder heroines that populate the top of the USA Today romance top ten almost eight to one judging from my tracking of the conversation.
Tired insists that “AAR has a racism problem” while ignoring the diversity of its positive reviews for POC authors and characters, and ignoring its top ten lists focused on diverse romance that have boosted marginalized voices. I’ve found multiple authors who write diversely through them whom I never would have known existed.
I should add that I think there’s a sad lack of realization in the industry and without it that women’s lives were incredibly different and diverse throughout history in general and yes – as a brown person I’m exhausted by the idea that all moc and woc in historical romance must be downtrodden, but paper activism with no research placed behind it continues to be unhelpful.
That is lovely to say. Thank you. The staff here is enthusiastic about diverse romance and romance in general. It’s nice to be given credit for that.
I don’t think anyone here is saying they are against diverse protagonists and side characters in historical romance. The big beef seems to be when authors appear to be working from a checklist rather than telling compelling stories with believable characters. Of course, in fairness to writers- who are frequently dumped on from every angle- publishers often mold/coerce a creator’s original vision into something it’s not. (See my previous comments on this thread for greater details.) It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of these types of “checklist characters” come from the editors and marketing department rather than the authors themselves. Based on some of the publishing horror stories I have read, I can easily imagine someone at a publishing house telling an author, “You know what’s *in* right now? Black left-handed lesbians who hail from the East Indies. If you want your book published, find a way to work one or two of those into your story.” Obviously, this is a fictional example of what *might* happen. But if it’s as true as I suspect, it’s very disheartening. Because that kind of box ticking reduces characters to their skin colors, sexual orientations, or whatever, instead of presenting them as fully rounded people whose presence feels natural and essential to the story.
TiredToo: As Jessie said, there are enough examples of people calling HEAs for marginalized characters just in this thread for me to be justified in my comments, but this issue is not limited to this thread. For example, there was a review of an HR on this site that said the book was unrealistic because an interracial couple couldn’t have a HEA in the nineteenth century and rated the book poorly because of that. There is the ONGOING issue with the whiteness if the top 100 romances. Also, the idea that marginalized characters are a “trend,” as was stated in just this mini subthread, is inherently racist.
Also, if my comments seemed unrelated to that specific stream, they actually were. None of my other comments directly addressing racist comments were approved, and I was only able to post these comments in an already approved thread, so I took the opportunity.
Tired: You only have one comment that wasn’t approved. Here’s what it says:
“Well said? They are saying they are okay with ignoring the suffering of other humans so that it doesn’t disturb their holiday, possibly financially contributing to the system oppressing those people. That is disgusting.”
There is no other comment of yours that hasn’t been posted. Please, if you’re going to trash us (and yes, I’ve been on Twitter) at least be honest.
After that, I used another name, and after that I gave up. Because like I said, I’m tired. I’m tapping out of this because I feel like we’re just going to go in circles. I want to challenge all of you to set aside your defensiveness and really examine what some people are saying here.
Please tell me the other names and I’ll look at them. I’m not interested in tapping into some censorship story that isn’t true.
Tied, I remember that review. and I didn’t agree with it. But the rest of your comment shows that the information you’re citing comes a survey by a woman whose research methods were poorly applied. I read her Twitter when she was gathering the information that was eventually used and to say the results were badly sourced is an understatement.
That review is one in the hundreds of reviews posted to this website, some of which have been very critical of racist thought in romance and the colonialism put on display in certain historicals. AAR isn’t a groupthink experiment, and one bad review doesn’t take away the positives the site has brought to the romance discourse.
The top ten was voted by AAR’s readers and it was conducted a year ago. To suggest the site hasn’t changed in all of that time shows a lack of critical thought. Would you have prefer that Dabney lied about the results last year or that the website run the opinions of its reviewers in the hope that they would be diverse? AAR can’t force its readers to vote at a higher volume for books with protagonists who are nonwhite, non-christian, non-ablebodied and non-straight, as much as I wish they might.
Good for you for throwing yourself on an opportunity like a good ally ought to, but I don’t like being spoken over by anyone. Even someone with good intentions.
For me, I suppose, the real problem with so much HR – and I mainly read it – is historical inaccuracy, the aforementioned #MeToo characters, silly misuse of titles (why write about the aristocracy FFS!) and inane and over-worked plots.
Also, I am sick to the back teeth of series that should have stopped after the first instalment and authors who think they have to preach at me to ensure I get the picture: Old Times Bad: Need Modern Morals. No, No, No, No!! My mistake? Reading Georgette Heyer first. Big Mistake. The standards were set for me with my first encounter with her which was, as I have said here before, was after I’d exhausted Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. A university professor of English recommended GH to me – enough said.
Editors: Ou art thou? Grow up, get a dictionary, a copy of “Titles and Forms of Address” (available on Amazon), a map of Britain (so you get the length of coach journeys correct) and any one-volume history of Europe. There are plenty of easy-to-read books on food, interior décor, dress, social mores and so forth. I have read so many for pleasure and I am speaking of books that are entertaining, fun reads that help you get the picture!
I think I had better dismount my hobby horse now. There are some really good writers of HR out there but you need dedication to find them and must wade through the dross to get there. I must compile a list and then maybe I will post here again about them.
I look forward to your list!
Oh. no, please do remain on the hobby horse – I’m in agreement with everything you’ve said so far and would definitely be interested to know more!
Historical inaccuracy: yes!!
Drives me into various states of grrrrrrr….
A reason I like reading those alternate realities of Meljean Brooks (what happened to her??), Bec McMaster and others:
If you do not want historical reality, take a sideways step and write that. Then you can have inclusive, or not, feminist, or not, and and… that is fun, and clearly labelled, then you just WALK THE TALK!!!
That is a solution if you do not want to do the boring research, or if you secretly despise women who did not starve in a ditch but submitted or bought into, or actually supported subjugating attitudes, or if you hate the dirt and slow carriages of history, or or…..
grrrrr…..
ok, that is all I can say on historical accuracy. I hate the mis-labeling that it is to me.
It actually completely destroys my trust in the HR label, because these books are not HR.
So I do not try new to me authors anymore without research, and even with, not everybody has my extensive knowledge on attitudes (where has religion gone? everyone was religious then, and believed at least some bits of the “God-given” social order and prejudice..) and economical realities, so I might hate a setup for not being historical that others did not.
Which means that HR is in deep crisis for me, I read less of it, I avoid it actively and it leads authors who might be great to being DNR for me.
Example:
Day of the Duchess has a wonderful emotional intensity, great characters, angst and love and high drama written well – and I would actively go through the whole backlist and read anything by the author if it was not supposed to be HR. The simple fact is that the h would have been physically restrained from staging her dramatic opening scene and shunned for it. So, based on so many recs, I slogged through, overriding all my knowledge of those times, but I could not sustain the effort. I skimmed, I got irritated, I cherry picked only the relationship stuff. It was too much work, and left me hoping she will write contemps. Will not read the author again.
I have a few completely other comments, will post separately.
Meljean Brooks has a new fantasy romance coming out this December under the name Milla Vane and I’m unbelievably excited!
Ooh, that’s exciting news!
I’m so happy to hear this.
Good news!
I admit I liked that book (Day of the Duchess) even though the opening was completely implausible. Sometimes an author can create a story that’s compelling enough not to make me want to throw the book at the wall, and SM did that there. I have, however, not read anything of hers since – her new series is a big pile of nope for me.
For some reason, publishers have it in their heads that Dukes Sell. And therefore heroes in HR must be noblemen of some description, and they’re either fabulously wealthy or dreadfully in debt. “But,” they may argue, “if he’s okay financially, that would make for a boring book.” Er – NO IT WOULDN’T. What you NEED are authors – and there are some still around – who are able to find another way into their story, or find another way to spin the story, or vary the trope or whatever. HR about two people “just” falling in love is perfectly adequate and doesn’t need all the whistles and bells of mysteries, spies or ahistorical elements – witness Caroline Linden’s Love and Other Scandals, Mia Vincy’s A Wicked Kind of Husband, Lorraine Heath’s Waking Up With the Duke and most of Mary Balogh’s current output. The best authors are able to make that work – sadly the current crop of HR writers consists of 10% “best” and 90% “for god’s sake just stop!”
I also liked Day of the Duchess in spite of that scene (and in spite of the big closing scene, which seemed implausible both in the “they wouldn’t allow it” sense and in the “that sounds physically impossible” sense.) I am realizing that I give some authors more of a pass on plausibility – with SM, I have read enough of her work to know that she likes Big Public Scenes, which I generally do not care for, but I find other parts of her stories good enough to overlook the bits I dislike/find wholly unrealistic. Although I also haven’t liked her new series. Same with Tessa Dare – her dialogue makes me laugh, even if the stories bear very little resemblance to anything I consider realistic, and sometimes, I’m up for that.
That’s my main problem too. Combined with what Caz Owens wrote it’s the death of many HRs. I’m an historian and have worked many years with the original documents from 17th to 19th century. Modern PC was no theme then. Servants were servants, class was a very strict thing to observe.
Very, very few women were even consious of the fact that they were unfairly treated. They didn’t know otherwise, they didn’t want to become scientists and so on. That’s not to say that they had no influence at all. Marriages even then depended on the character of husband and wife. And I really don’t believe that so many women didn’t want to marry because… what all the modern heroines prefer.
I’m willing to excuse many things when the book truly is well written and is very funny as par example some Tessa Dare books are. But these are exceptions.
I’m not very good in expressing my thougts in English but I hope you could understand what I ment.
Thank you for saying this! (And you have expressed yourself very well :)) As an amateur historian and the mother of a daughter very interested in gender history and who is currently writing her university dissertation on womens’ roles in the early modern period, what you say really strikes a chord. The best authors can take those female characters and have them operate within the boundaries of their societies while still making them into engaging heroines – sadly, it seems that right now there’s a tendency to equate “interesting” with “strident”.
It’s interesting that fantasy historical romance is handling strong women far better IMHO.
It is. But then that’s probably because those women aren’t bound by the conventions women of the time were. As someone here says, the authors of such novels are free to create their own rules and problems which need addressing.
I think you’re confusing historical discourse with practice. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were a great number of middle class women who flouted gender conventions, which is why those conventions were brought up so much. Women started political movements and social groups, organised strikes, wrote books, became scientists who worked with men, chose not to marry, etc. In the mid to late Victorian Era there was actually a perceived “crisis of masculinity” because many men were concerned about the amount of women who were educated and independent. My main problem with HR is that it reflects how we think of the past more than it does the actual past, re: attitudes towards gender. Gender dynamics were obviously very different, but they were a lot more nuanced and interesting than I think most of the comments here recognize. You could look at all these women as exceptions, but that would be a whole lot of exceptions, and it would sound a lot like the no true Scotsman fallacy
What’s the no true Scotsman fallacy?
It’s like when you make a claim/generalization about a group, but when you’re faced with counterexamples that would undermine your claim, you say that those examples don’t really count as members of the group for that reason. So in this case it would be people claiming that normal women didn’t hold certain social beliefs in the past centuries, and then discounting all the women who did by saying that because they held those beliefs they don’t count as “normal women”.
Got it. Thanks.
Women in previous centuries certainly were conscious that they were mistreated. They did know otherwise, even if a cohesive movement to unify them often eluded them. Women wrote of their fears as well as their dreams of living in dignity, Women in previous centuries understood rape and sexual exploitation – women in all classes and of all races. Enslaved African American women wrote slave narratives depicting sexual exploitation from their white masters. Governesses in the 19th century recorded fears of living impoverished lives if they failed to appease upper class employers or having to succumb to sexual harassment. Married women knew the hardships on their bodies of bearing too many children. There is such rich history of what women knew and what women hoped to have instead, even as women often struggled to find the language to express emergent feminist ideas compared to what we would consider feminism today. Women’s literature is filled with tragic stories of suicide given the lack of options, and the women’s movements of the 19th century often resulted in brutality against women brave enough to take a public stance. I’m a women’s lit teacher and find it puzzling that working with original texts from previous centuries leads one to conclude that women were “not conscious” of their conditions. Of course, not all women sought structural changes, but to argue that only a very few were aware of the egregious abuses of patriarchy is not accurate.
I fully agree with your comment, and I think it does a real disservice to people to assume that the lives of women, sexual minorities, racial minorities etc. were completely defined by their oppression despite so much evidence to the contrary. I think the fact that people view historical romances full of only white, straight, neurotypical people as more accurate than historical romances with a diverse range of characters is the real example of people (readers) applying their own 21st century views to the past.
Good post, Blackjack. But I would also like to add that live was crap for pretty much everyone regardless of race, sex, etc., certainly when measured by today’s standards. Yes, things were terrible for women for all the reasons you mentioned, but men throughout various places and points in history ran the risk of conscription, press-ganging, Shanghaiing, other forms of enslavement (sometimes in galleys- a virtual death sentence), forced castration (I seriously doubt many palace eunuchs volunteered for the job), serious/debilitating workplace injuries and fatalities (still a problem today), and so forth. I’m not mentioning any of this as a contest for “Who had it worse, men or women?” I merely bring it up because there’s this idea that men of the past all lived like kings- or dukes if you prefer. But hey! Even the privileged of the past lacked access to antibiotics, modern surgery, anesthesia, electricity, refrigeration, central heating, air conditioning, flush toilets, automobiles, air travel, internet access, and all that other great stuff we take for granted today. In short, as the book from the 1970s once stated, “The good old days, they were rotten!” But like Jessie replied, people still found ways to carve out some happiness and romance.
@Nan de Plume – Yes, but jumping in to “add” that men too suffered, especially in the context of the discussion above and the message I was responding to, does sound as if you are trying to create false equivalency between the additional suffering of marginalized people and women with the hardship of life in general for men. I think most readers of historical fiction understand that there were specific hardships in previous centuries that have been largely eradicated in western societies, like antibiotics. There should not be false equivalencies though that minimize the privileges men experienced in general just because they were born male, or white, etc.. I’m not sure if that was your intent, but your post felt tone deaf in the context of the above discussion.
Yes, I agree with you that women had it pretty rough, but that there were definitely crusaders and other non-conformists- many of whom now star as fictionalized HR heroines.
That’s a fair point about comparing the past to the present. I really should have mentioned that in a separate post instead of trying to conflate it. However, it is also a fair point to consider that very, very few men in history were what we would think of as privileged. This tiny minority were the ones who got to write the bulk of the narratives (I.e. History is written by the victors). But most people, then as now, were mostly powerless working stiffs. And most men of the distant past, despite their advantages or race, were not allowed to vote and bore the other risks I mentioned (conscription, enslavement, etc.)
Continuing with the issue of men. I mentioned them because I read a few posts in here wondering where all the working class male characters are in historical romances as opposed to the extremely heavy emphasis on dukes. I thought it was a reasonable point worth exploring, although in retrospect, I should have responded specifically to those comments to avoid confusion.
My big problem with my previous comment was trying to address too many posts/topics at once. With more than 200 comments in this thread, and counting, sorry if I was trying to respond to you and other commenters simultaneously to save time. No hard feelings?
I’m getting frustrated with all the sequel-bait that gets dropped in, especially when it revolves around secret clubs or giant families etc, then precious pages get wasted catching up with previous couples etc. I was disappointed with the last Eloisa James that spent more time on the heroine’s interactions with her aunt and a previous heroine than actually developing or strengthening the romance with the hero. I’m also over the “covent garden crime lord makes good”. Socially mobility was limited back then not to mention that the idea of these guys building crime empires by the age of 30 rings rings hollow. I like a self made hero but a lot of them are just distractingly impossible.
It seems to me there’s some serious tension between some of the things many (not all) of us are looking for in HR. Escapism and historical accuracy are not going to fit well together for many of us, at least not unless we’re discarding certain elements of both. Escapism for me sometimes includes a heroine who is more independent than an actual woman in her circumstances could have been at the time, just as it does a duke who is far more socially progressive than an actual duke is likely to have been. I personally don’t want to read an HR novel that is so historically accurate that it emphasizes ALL of the views on race, class, ability etc. that would have been widely held at the time – I can’t escape into that.
Which is not to say I don’t appreciate books where the characters are more traditional in the sense of NOT having a social justice type mission, just that I have limits to the amount of historical accuracy I actually want (this also includes accuracy as to levels of hygiene, disease, etc.) Also not to say that I never care about historical accuracy, but it usually won’t totally put me off a book (sloppy editing will, though, and as someone noted above I think that and the pressure to produce is partially driving the quality decrease.)
On a related note, I’m a little puzzled by the use of #metoo as a shorthand for these heroines – in my view that tag refers to efforts to speak more openly about sexual assault and harassment and to obtain accountability, not to any woman who considers herself a feminist or has a profession (the latter being the kind of heroine I think people have in mind when they’re using that tag here).
Good point!
How I understand it:
Women were endangered if ever alone, and considered property, their fertility owned by men, that mindest pervades history, so not knowing that “my body belongs to me” defines historicals and might be impossible to square with #metoo as a mindset. I see my sensitivities shifting, as a woman of 54, rapidly. Some older MJP books I reread recently did not work as well anymore as in my memories. Women owning themselves is how I read #metoo when mentioned here.
On historical accuracy:
I also emphatically do not need to read all the details of dirt squalor etc. in a romance. But a person in those times would not usually dwell on them either. The references to daily bathing, the constant underlining of friendship with servants, the inclusivity for socially marginalized – that grates. Not going into detail on hygiene or number of dresses, that works for me.
I can have a historical setting that I enjoy, and can ignore what people living there usually would ignore, too. Like I can go on a holiday to a poor country, enjoy the beaches, overpay on trinkets in the markets, and not dwell on the many difficulties of life there, unless I must. Does that make sense? It works for me. Pretending there are no poor does not. For me.
Happy for anyone who can enjoy it.
Well said. I don’t think any of us who love HR are saying that everything in the genre MUST be historically accurate. As you say, there are lots of aspects of that timeframe that are sanitised or have dramatic license applied – and that happens in every genre (witness the current uproar about the forthcoming rom-com featuring a couple who are on politically opposite sides; a republican hero? Um… nope.) But there are things there is absolutely NO excuse for getting wrong, because there is plenty of information available – forms of address, laws of inheritance, how to get divorces, rules of society etc. etc. Someone on Twitter a while back responded to a comment about historical accuracy by saying, “oh, but what about all those handsome, ripped dukes under thirty? What about the ones with bad teeth and bathing habits?” I responded that there are plenty of men around today who – sadly – have bad dental hygene and BO, yet almost all romantic heroes are handsome and fit with six pack abs and great hair, regardless of what era they’re written in. I accept the escapism inherent in the romance genre as a whole, but HR is called “historical” for a reason. And can I say, speaking as a British person, that it pisses me off so much that my country’s culture is good enough for (American) authors to set their stories in, but they don’t respect it enough to get things right, whether it’s titles or the fact that we don’t have book stores – they’re book SHOPS – or sidewalks, faucets or elevators, and that the things you put on a sofa are CUSHIONS not pillows. Small things maybe, but if I wrote a story set in contemporary US in which my characters walked along the pavement in the Autumn to get to the shops to buy a bottle of fizzy drink, there would probably be an uproar!
100% in agreement!!!
Regarding inclusivity…
I’m a person of color. I enjoy seeing people of color in historical romances. But I still want some level of historical accuracy, like in the movie Belle when Lady Ashford tells her son she won’t have Belle, a mixed-race woman, in the house.
“She is an heiress,” he replies.
“Although exceptions can be made.”‘
I also don’t want to be too aware of the author’s determination to include peop[e of marginalized groups in the story (any more than I want to be aware of the author’s personal beliefs about religion or feminism or so on). When done well, inclusivity is seamless. The characters are a natural part of the story.
But when not done well, it can feel like virtue signaling. As I read Courtney Milan’s After the Wedding, with its bisexual heroine, biracial hero, feisty lesbian senior citizen, and neuroatypical future heroine, I wasn’t too engaged with the story, partly because it wasn’t as good as Milan’s previous books, and partly because I was speculating on who would turn up next – a Muslim, a transgender person, someone who uses a wheelchair?
I really think CM has lost her way when it comes to HR – her Brothers Sinister series was wonderful and achieved a really good balance between issues and romance, but the Worth books? Not so much.
And yes, I felt she was ticking boxes with that last one, too.
Courtney Milan is including multiple characters with multiple identities because that is how our world is now and has always been. She is a biracial, bisexual, neuro-diverse author. We live in a dynamic world with multiple experiences and identities. Many people have relatives, friends, coworkers, lovers who have different backgrounds and experiences to ourselves. Naturally, this occurred in the past, as well. To reduce different identities as “marks on a checklist” is dehumanizing and unfair.
I love KJ Charles for that: inclusivity done well, and real.
I understand what you mean about a character that seems to be added in just to tick off a box rather than because they are fully realized characters integral to the plot. While I certainly enjoy diverse characters of different backgrounds in my novels, I don’t like to feel like the author is pandering or being insincere by just putting the characters in to say “hey look how great I am, I am so inclusive!”
Another thing that irks me is someone writing about a character who would be marginalized at the time but making it seem like things are just so easy for them! Society and everyone will just accept and adore them by the end of the novel. Not true, and I think it does a disservice by not showing the really horrible times people went through. You don’t have to go back far in the 20th century, and many would say in this century to see interracial couples being persecuted.
We obviously want our heroes and heroines to be super nice which is why you have the characters in Downton Abbey etc. tolerant and accepting of pretty much everything and everyone when they likely would have been the most rigid people possible. Many servants were told never to even make eye contact with the members of the family. They would never be “friends” with the people they served.
One thing I enjoy about both Ellen O’Connell’s works and Carla Kelly’s is that they address that “society” simply isn’t going to accept most of their couples due to factors like race, mixing of social classes etc. Some family and friends will, and some won’t, but the couples are happy enough in their relationships that they won’t let it stand in their way. That to me is true romance. Love enduring despite hardships and prejudice.
Are you implying that muslims/transgender/disabled people didn’t exist in historical times? Because I can assure you they did. And they deserve equal page time as the white able bodied cis characters that have been written about for decades. It’s not virtue signalling if you are accurately representing the world and it’s many variations. Just because the old men in power didn’t write about them at the time doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. It just means they wrote with the same blinkered view that you seem to want.
I want more inclusivity in my romance. I want less rapey rakes and more stories of people rebelling against the system. And they did rebel. If they hadn’t then nothing would have changed for any of those groups.
“Are you implying that muslims/transgender/disabled people didn’t exist in historical times?”
No.
“It just means they wrote with the same blinkered view that you seem to want.”
If I wanted a blinkered view, I’d hardly be reading Courtney Milan,
I read a striking Twitter post today from Courtney Milan where she questioned why “white, cis, straight, allo, Christian, able-bodied” characteristics aren’t considered a Checklist. It’s a great point and indicative of the power of norms and the existence of hegemony.
Great post, Katherine, and I share your observation on the casual and often inaccurate use of #MeToo as a term interchangeable with feminism. It’s not, but is instead specifically about sexual assault and sexual harassment and women feeling able to voice publicly their experiences. Men too have come forward with their own sexual harassment stories and are part of this movement. Where I see romance authors engaging with the #MeToo movement is around “consent” and creating characters that explicitly reflect on this issue in all its complexities — men and women.
Well said re: Me Too also including men (and non-binary), all good points. I have also noticed the consent question being treated very differently in newer books. This is one area where, while I absolutely understand how anachronistic it is, it can really pull me out of a story if it feels off to me (I’m thinking of a particular scene involving a very drunk heroine here.) I don’t think it’s fair to expect HR authors to always wrap in modern mores on consent, nor do I think they should have to play an educational role – their job is to tell a good story, in my view – but I’m realizing that this must be a very tricky area for authors/editors. Scenes that are delicious escapism for one reader might be a turnoff for another. It’s not easy! Another reason I’m so grateful to good reviewers; I read relatively few books I end up really disliking because I do a lot of pre-read screening.
An excellent statement!
HR Quality issues of all kind:
Historical Inaccuracy _ I concur! with all above – I need that in HR. It is not HR without it. Misnaming, misselling, I feel.
Other vanished items:
Where are the Working Men? – and I do not mean the truly poor, making that romantic in those times is very very hard and rare – I mean
– those barons who actually manage their property, and need to care about horses, crops, weather, rents, vicars and all that stuff, or
– those gentlemen active in the Foreign Office, or in politics …
– or others who are not just completely following their whims and preferences in the stratosphere above us all – they are not there anymore, except in specialty niches, like Carla Kelly, KJ Charles and such. So a great source of realism is lost, and the books weaken.
I find billionaires and dukes sloppy and lazy as romance material, (except in HP, which I consume like candy. as nice and forgettable stuff.) You need not figure out how “normal rich people” manage and write those constraints into your book.
Where are the dead siblings (children died a lot, then), the dirt, the religion, the poor, the servants who are not my friends, the needlework, the managing of a big household as work, the close social control, the daily grind, the slow travel and delays in knowledge, the food spoiling or being scarce, where is just plain history?
Where are the real women of those times? I like romance describing people who meet, have some internal/external journey, and a HEA. In a specific time and place. As my staple. Mystery, Suspense, comedy, over the top, are all lovely, but the staple is that. In HR, I by now need to search niche authors to find women I can relate to. Not the Kardashians, not the luminaries, not the caricatures, just whole rounded adults living in their times.
I will not go into writing, plotting, or any such weaknesses, they pertain to all genres, I wish for editors, grammarians, proof readers – there was a time I trusted that books with publisher would fulfill some basics… no more. Much self published is better than big brand publishing for that, by now.
As a corollary to above, I revere the few authors left, like Mary Balogh, Carla Kelly, Teresa/Tracy Grant, Loretta Chase, They have a sense of the place, the background, and the possible thoughts and actions of people in those historical settings.
I also reread or find lots of “oldies” like Edith Layton, Roberta Gellis, Laura Kinsale…and of course Heyer.
And I mourn that Mary Jo Putney and many others who have an effortless grounding in HR seem to lose their way on plotting, pacing, and simply delivering a good read.
A few new good ones come up occasionally, but this is rare. My reading has shifted away from HR, more contemps, more m/m, more urban fantasy historicals, and less romance overall. I am sad about it.
I am happy to read suggestions, a few good to me HR authors appear, like Mia Vincy, Joanne Bourne, Sherry Thomas, but they are rare, I find. And I really want romance, not a mystery plot, no spies (though Joanna Bourne did them well, I can only read one or two at a time), just romance in all its rich variety!
And yes, maybe HR is a dying breed, like HR by Catherine Coulter, K. Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rogers died, maybe it is the turn of the wheel again, due to #metoo… maybe some favorites will become wallbangers now?
Re where are the working men: I am tired of reading about Dukes, or other fabulously wealthy aristocrats. I wish some authors would shake things up and write a HR about working people. Maybe a bank clerk meets a nice seamstress. Or a valet and a maid, giving us a servant’s view of those fabulously wealthy dukes and duchesses. Carla Kelly has written several wonderful stories where the hero and heroine are regular working people. Part of the problem with HR in past couple of years has been the lack of realistic variety in the hero/heroine’s backgrounds. There comes a point where you see the book is about a wealthy Duke and you just yawn.
I’m doing tags in our reviews database and one I’m working on is “working class historical.” Stay tuned!
“I wish some authors would shake things up and write a HR about working people.”
A few years back, I wrote a historical romance where the hero worked as an architect. A literary agent suggested I make him the heir to a fortune instead (and needless to say,, no agent offered to represent that manuscript).
If you want working class historical romance, I strongly suggest reading almost anything by Rose Lerner. That’s her specialty and it’s AMAZING!!! Her level of research is excellent as well. Start with Sweet Disorder or Listen to the Moon.
Actually, Friday’s the [email protected] is all about non-traditional historical romance our readers love. I’m sure Rose’s work will make the list!
I’ve read many HRs this year that started strong but then fell into old, gimmicky plots. Last minute kidnappings. of the heroine to force the hero to see how much he loves the heroine – really, haven’t we seen this enough?!?! Or heroine sees “hero” making out with another only it turns out to be hero’s secret twin brother – this plot is not worthy of any author’s pen. Or I can’t marry you because I’m not aristocracy – but wait, plot twist and now I am.
There are still authors bringing originality – like Julie Anne Long’s books this year – so fresh! And Mary Balogh continues to put new spins on old tales.
I’m also aghast at the editorial issues in so many books this year! I reviewed one with three different spellings of the same name. How hard can this be to get right?
Luckily, Historical Mystery seems to have had a better year!
Yes, historical mysteries have been so strong. For me, they are often my substitute now when I want to read historical fiction.
Seconded! I’ve found so many HM books I love this year (I still can’t get Lizzie Hardwicke out of my head.)
Lizzie Hardwicke is a great series! Georgina Clarke writes beautiful HM. Even without physical contact, her romance is stronger than many HRs I’ve read this year. She knows that romance starts in the head!
I think the lack of variety in current HR is a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” As an author myself, I can safely say that writers get dumped on from all ends- editors, publishing houses, critics, etc. And this can make the job of uninhibited storytelling extremely difficult, if not impossible. Anything that pushes the envelope, or is even mildly controversial, is bound to get squelched in editing- if it even gets that far in a publishing house. Although I am not a HR writer (with the exception of one erotica short story I did), and I self-publish, I know more horror stories about how authors are pressured into shaping or completely altering their work in order to meet industry standards.
For example, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,” was supposed to star an adult protagonist, but the publisher told the author, “Hey, make the protagonist 15 so we can tap into the YA market.” That’s one of the milder examples. This article by Ellen Finnegan gives some more insight into publishing woes in case anyone else is interested: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/10/ellen-finnigan/why-i-decided-to-publish-directly-through-amazon/. The anecdote that got me is how a friend of hers was forced to include a drag race, accidental decapitation, and steamboat fire to his manuscript in order to get published. Talk about contrived plot points! And Ms. Finnigan was told to add more church scenes to her memoir- her MEMOIR- if she wanted mainstream publication.
I’m not saying writers don’t bear any responsibility for their work, but when an author needs an advance to pay the light bill or for a dinner more substantial than instant noodles, making nasty alterations to the work (i.e. “selling out to the man”) can be pretty darn tempting.
So, how does this relate to HR novels? It often comes down to the publishing houses, who are usually too afraid to take chances for financial reasons- which is understandable from a business perspective. I give Carina Press credit for seeking out stories that mix and mash genres and take greater chances than other romance publishing imprints I’ve encountered.
As for historical accuracy versus escapism, I think both authors and publishers are in a bind. Nowadays, internet complaints can get books pulled from production for being “offensive.” If the media has that kind of power, it makes sense that few mainstream publisher or authors would be willing to take chances that could damage their images. Hence, you get all the borderline anachronistic 18th century heroines with 21st century attitudes and causes. And, ironically, these fears of public shunning limit the diversity of characters and situations. So now you get your generic abolitionist dukes and orphanage-running heroines because in the political climate today, creating a nuanced son of a plantation owner (*gasp*) who benefits from his family’s privilege but has qualms about the institution of slavery is completely out of the question for any author or publishing house that doesn’t want to get pilloried on Twitter.
On a related note, movies are just as preachy today as the novels- which is also annoying. Lately, I have been enjoying a number of films from the 1970s that are often quite shocking in their content. More than once, I have said, “Wow. That film *definitely* could not have been made today!” But some of them are great films, largely because there was more freedom to tell a story without worrying about every social justice warrior landmine writers have to tiptoe through today.
I’m not saying people should go out of their way to offend others, and it’s *okay* to be offended and say so. But I believe the answer to the current problems in HR as well as other genres is to encourage more writing, not less. If someone writes an offensive book- and everyone is bound to be offended by something, perhaps even this comment- I think the most productive response is to say, “Wow. I didn’t like that. I guess I’ll read something else.” And then move on. Are there irredeemably racist dumpster fires of books out there? You bet. But I choose not to dwell on them because making a big stink about such books on the internet can actually give the authors more publicity and credence than they deserve. Let’s praise the awesome books instead! Case in point, I just finished reading Cat Sebastian’s “A Duke in Disguise” and loved it. Ms. Sebastian is excellent at subverting tropes while still paying attention to historical accuracy. She even included some of her research in the back of the book. But even this title sneaks in some 21st century attitudes but nothing too overwhelming.
So what can you and I do*personally* to ensure there are more diverse plots, characters, settings, etc.? This is going to sound trite to some, but I say, “Write!” I know self-publishing has its problems, but I think removing gatekeepers has been a good thing for a lot of authors who want to tell stories without being beholden to mainstream publishing requirements and sensibilities. Frankly, if these publishing houses want to remain in business in the 21st century, they ought to open their own free self-publishing lines like Amazon. Then they could cultivate talented popular authors and find out what the public really wants. Anyone else agree?
Yeah. All of this. Being preached at is no fun. Entertainment has got to be entertaining first.
It’s boring to read crap that has been written to improve me. It’s not what I am looking for in romance or in movies.
This is really interesting, thank you for commenting so extensively. I’m sure many of us have heard similar stories about authors being told they need to do X in order to sell books, and of course if every author does X, then X is what gets published, X is what people buy so publishers are then telling their authors “you have to do X if you want to sell.” (In HR, you can almost certainly substitute the word “duke” for X!)
Can I just say I love a good duke story? Please don’t stone me…lol!
I enjoy the escape of living in that upper-crust world for a day or two, I don’t want to think about dirt or disease or poverty, I want the silliness and sexiness of romance with fancy clothes and without real life complications. I also want good, imaginative writing, well-drawn characters, and a love story that makes sense.
In a story that works I don’t get much bothered by mild anachronisms and since I don’t know the proper forms of address, those don’t bother me either. I’ve have read many books by British writers, however, so word usage (shop vs store, etc., as Caz has pointed out) is important to me. I
I don’t mind a duke story, either! I DO mind the stories where the hero is a duke for the sake of it. Kelly Bowen’s A Duke in the Night is an excellent example of that; the hero is a businessman who unexpectedly inherits, but there’s absolutely no need for him to be a duke. I suspect she was told to make him a duke so they could put the word in the title. There are plenty of stories around now about noblemen who own gambling clubs, who, in most cases, don’t need to be titled. Lorraine Heath’s current series isn’t really working well for me, but at least some of her protagoinsts – the Trewloves – aren’t titled. I just wish we could get past that short-sighted attitude that only noble heroes sell books in HR.
this is such a wonderful conversation; so many of the thoughts mirror what I have been thinking
Thank you all for contributing
I’ve found my people!
The inaccuracy drives me mad. I’ve almost stopped reading historical romance, even though I write it. I just can’t.
There are a few reasons. One is that the author herself is expected to take all the responsibility for getting the history right. There is no historical editor for a novel, and I don’t know of any editor offering that service.
There are egregious, insulting errors with titles, custom and practice, everything.
And you know why nobody cares? Because those books sell. In the past five plus years, the “historical” comedy is the best selling, probably because it’s the only kind the major publishers will take. Some publishers have said “we’ve tried different, but it doesn’t sell.” That’s a feeble excuse for not putting their money behind it. Authors are rejected because their books aren’t funny enough, aren’t hooky enough, aren’t interesting enough. Never, ever because they’re not historical enough.
The result is the near-death of the historical romance, especially the Regency. It’s been milked dry. Here’s another book about a duke’s daughter who refuses to marry and will only marry a man who loves her. Or the heroine who longs for independence (if she really wanted that, she’d pick her husband carefully, not refuse to marry anyone at all!) The titles are usually puns on popular songs, or sayings. Who cares about historical accuracy if the book sells?
Sales are declining. Publishers are only taking the books that fill the modern America in Regency England slot, and the formulas are tightening.
What’s next, nobody knows. But I think we’re pretty much Regency’d out.
Plus, there’s the click farms from Thailand. They are all over the Amazon lists. They take the tropes, and either machine write them, or employ a ghost writer to do it. Then they either sell the books to “authors,” or put them out under a pseudonym. After that, there are the click farms, people paid to page through the books to get the required page turns for a Kindle Unlimited payout. Look for books under the “Cobalt Fairy” imprint, and the ones with alliterative names, though there are others who do it differently.
To counter this, authors – people who actually write their books – are pushing them out faster. One every six weeks is the optimum. What sort of quality do you think you’re going to get grinding books out at that speed?
Me? I keep writing, but I’m not playing that game. My income has tanked, but I still love to write. A lot of authors have given up, because Amazon is the big dog, and its system is so corrupt that it’s not worth doing it, especially if you want to make a living at it.
Sorry to be so depressing. But there might be a ray of light. I self-publish my backlist, and last month, for the first time, my “other” sales were bigger than my Amazon sales.
I’ve always been here, Lynne! 🙂 Thanks for your comments – you are so right and I’m sure that many of us around here agree with you 100%.
Ms. Connolly, you are correct on so many levels. Just this line right here drives the point home: “One is that the author herself is expected to take all the responsibility for getting the history right.” It makes one question what good are publishing houses any more if they don’t edit properly, don’t promote, create narrower and narrower publication niches, allow authors to take all the blame for insensitivities and inaccuracies, and pay their writers peanuts? Oh, and then there’s the whole thing about requiring an agent at most publishers. That’s another scam to rip off authors and skim their scant to non-existent profits off the top. The cruel irony is, without writers, none of these other people would have jobs! And yet we in the trade of the written word are often treated and paid the worst.
If you need to listen to a good rant from a frustrated author, watch the YouTube video of Harlan Ellison entitled “Pay the Writer.” It’s a profanity-laden screed from a notoriously irascible science fiction writer, but I think he sums up many writers’ frustrations quite vividly- regardless of genre.
As for Amazon, I have been mostly happy with them. I know there are horror stories circulating about them too, but it’s the only free publishing platform I can find that doesn’t completely screw authors and actually has some degree of visibility. Because, face it. Nobody else is paying writers 35 to 70% royalties depending on the sales channel. Plus I have near total freedom in story length, topic, publication schedule, titles, and other aspects. Yes, editing and cover design are drawbacks, but it doesn’t sound like mainstream publishing is doing such a great job on those fronts either lately. Thankfully, one of the distinct advantages of writing in the erotica and erotic romance genres is that customers generally aren’t as picky about covers and editing. Not that I don’t try to do a good job!
But the whole quantity versus quality is a real problem in both mainstream publishing and self-publishing. If you think one book every 6 weeks is bad, the expected output for erotica short stories on KDP is one or two per WEEK! Granted, short stories in this category range from 2,500 to 8,000 words- usually on the shorter end- but if you want something better than, “Ooh, mister. That’s too BIG. Ahhhh!” people shouldn’t expect an author to produce that kind of unreasonable output.
I’m definitely on the fence about Kindle Unlimited. The payout is about half a penny a page, which is abysmal, but what is the alternative? We live in an era with so much free online content, that customers expect the ability to borrow books without paying for them. I imagine many customers are in the mindset of, “Oh. It’s not on Kindle Unlimited. So I guess I’ll find something else to read.” And with inflation and everything else going on in the financial world, I don’t blame them. I admit that I am guilty of this myself, not with Kindle Unlimited, but with the public library. If I can’t get something at the library, I usually don’t read it. Macmillian has an embargo on library e-books starting November 1st, but I seriously doubt that will help their tanking sales. Because if people can’t afford a book, they just won’t buy it. At least with a borrowing system, you get *something,* even if that something is pathetic.
On a final note, Ms. Connolly, I looked at your website and see that you are quite prolific. And I’m glad you don’t hold yourself to a ridiculously short time table. Hang in there!
KU is a disaster for us–we make so much less money via our clickthru sales than we used to. It wouldn’t surprise me if the same is true for authors.
When you say “us,” are you referring to traditionally published authors?
I admit that I don’t have much to compare KU against because I have never been traditionally published. I’ve had blog posts and one story published in an anthology under a different pen name, but that’s a different ball game again. So I can’t say whether or not clickthru sales have hurt or help me.
When KU first came out, authors were paid by the book, not the page. But they quit that policy because a lot of writers, probably in erotica, were gaming the system by pumping out 2,500 word stories and making the same amount of money from borrows as full-length novels.
No–I mean AAR. We stay online and maintain the website with the tiny percentage from clickthrus we make when our readers buy books–and anything else–via our site. KU books don’t earn us a dime.
Thank you for the clarification.
Yikes! I didn’t realize KU books didn’t earn AAR money. Although it probably makes sense when you consider the authors only get about half a penny a page through that service.
On the self-published author end of things, I don’t know if there’s a really reliable system for determining whether KU helps or hurts sales. Even though I make next to nothing on KU borrows, they count toward sales rank which can increase visibility. And I often find that I will have a sale immediately following a borrow of the same title. Does that mean customers are trying before they buy, or are those sales just coincidences/wishful thinking? Because of (understandable!) customer privacy policies, there is a lack of transparency there. All interesting things to think about.
I’d add that book sales don’t make hardly any money for AAR because of the plummeting price of most books. We make 4% on anything that a reader buys in a visit that originated on our site. So given that few books our readers buy are more than 4.99, we make in the pennies. Where we make the money that supports us is when a reader buys something vastly more expensive. One purchase of a hundred dollar item makes us 4.00–we’d have to sell 100 books for that. So, if a reader clicked to a KU book through us but, while there, bought a new pair of shoes, we’d make money. Our Amazon revenues have been dropping over the past two years and I do think KU is a part of that however.
Effective storytelling should be the most important part of historical romance, but it seems to be in short supply in the last year or so. Perhaps 10 or 20 years ago, editors tightened up books they oversaw. Nevertheless, I think of Woodiwiss’s book “A Rose in Winter,” which was long and implausible, but effectively sucked many readers into its plot and became a bestseller.
Research and editing is lacking, many have said, and I agree. A particularly discouraging example was “A Conquest Impossible to Resist,” by Stephanie Laurens this summer. The plot revolves around the unusual architecture of a stable. The problem is, mares and stallions are both housed in the stable together — unbred. Stallions would never put up with being stabled next to mares coming into heat regularly. This isn’t a difficult fact to find out, but I think an increasing number of writers of Regency and other romances set in the 1800s have little or no farm knowledge. Neither do their editors. Many readers seem to lack that knowledge, too, which was fortunate for the author. I wish I could fact-check or edit Regencies, but I guess that’s a pipe dream.
There are too many dukes. I am happy to read about earls, who were still plenty rich and powerful in some places and poor and countrified in other locations. There’s also way too much contemporary oral it yet and convenience burdening some plots. If Georgette Heyer can get through a book without describing bathing, why can’t other authors?
There is a lot of pressure to reduce costs in publishing, but I wish I could buy romance hard copies with a code that would allow me to also download the volume as an ebook edition, particularly when I am buying a hardcover. At the same time, I would like to see better avenues for feedback on sloppy books and larger royalties to authors for ebooks. I am discouraged by all the authors who are self-publishing books on Amazon, since I use a Nook reader and therefore can’t buy their books. If authors and publishers could earn more, perhaps quality might triumph over quantity.
Ms. Long, that is a good point about Nook readers. Unfortunately, authors enrolled in KDP Select cannot have their e-books on other platforms, as you probably know.
Have you considered downloading a free Kindle app? It works on many devices. Although I realize people generally want to read on something that approximates the size and shape of an actual book.
As for downloading an e-book in conjunction with a hardcover, Amazon does something similar. Authors on KDP can choose to allow a free or discounted e-book with a purchase of the same paperback. Other publishers should seriously consider taking this approach. And yes, I’d like to see more hardcovers in the world again.
That’s interesting what you said about wanting “better avenues for feedback on sloppy books.” Just out of curiosity, what did you have in mind?
I would like to be able to highlight a typo, correct the spelling, have the correction supersede the typo in my ebook copy, and have the suggested correction transmitted to the publisher so future readers receive better quality downloads. This would not solve grammatical and factual problems, but a dedicated email for each title, open for say, a year, might be useful for all books, including print books.
Regarding apps: I tend to avoid apps, as I find the privacy standards slippery. In addition, I read for hours each day, and being able to switch from a back-lit screen to actual paper and then to simulated paper in the Nook works best for my eyes. Apps would tie me to back-lit screens longer than I would like.
I’m tired of the “Why should historical romance be accurate? After all, it’s only fiction” argument.
Well, because the word “history” is in the description. I’m not saying that the novel should become a history textbook, but what history the author chooses to depict, should be accurate. All that “bad teeth, smelly breath” stuff is a generalisation like any other – some people had great teeth, and toothbrushes existed even back then.
If you don’t want to write history, don’t write historical romance. Write fantasy historical. Label it, at least, so saps like me don’t buy yet another book which has Big Ben in Regency Britain, or talks about “England” as if it included England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. If an author can’t be bothered to get their facts right, what chance is there for the rest of the book?
I can forgive anything, no matter the trope, if you tell your story right. To me awful story telling is just awful – so I guess it all depends on the author’s writing skills.
What I can’t stand is a story with a ‘message’ – which is the reason why I stopped reading Courtney Milan. I get the reason behind it, but sometimes one just wants to read a simple romance story, you know?
Y0u’re right. I can forgive quite a bit if the author is telling a compelling story in a skilful way; but when that doesn’t happen, the reader isn’t caught up enough to be able to ignore the cracks.
And I’m with you on CM.
I think that Milan has always written books with “messages,” but more recently there is a didactic and somewhat strident writerly voice in her books that takes over. It takes skill to express ideas in a romance while keeping the romance front and center, and sadly, I feel that she is not expressing that skill. I’m not entirely sure anymore that romance is what she is comfortable writing. That really is a shame because she has written some superb ones. The Governess Affair is still one of my favorite romances, and it handled child abuse and the exploitation of governesses very well and in a relatively short book while never softening its focus on the main couple’s love affair. ds to be a distinction between the role ideas/messages play in any book and the skill an author uses to express ideas. All books have ideas but when they subsume the fictional elements, they feel more annoying than enjoyable and the books end up feeling less like fiction and more like a treatise.
Not that anyone has said or suggested otherwise, but just in case she’s reading: I am really, really rooting for CM, in whatever she ends up doing/writing going forward. I work in the field that she did prior to becoming a writer, and what she did within the #metoo movement was so brave, and must have been so scary, and I would totally understand if it f*d her up and f*d up her writing a little bit. And whatever she writes or doesn’t in future, I will always love and be grateful to her for The Brothers Sinister series.
Agreed!
Well, re-reading this, I sound condescending, and I don’t like that. So to be more precise: She’s one of my heroes for many reasons, and I hope she keeps writing whatever she feels like writing, and I look forward to more of her work.
Yes, thank you, Blackjack, for expressing my thought so eloquently.
Milan is a good author, and that’s why she was an auto buy for me up until her recent books. I used to be so amazed by her ability to write such wonderful stories with heavy topics, yet never lost sight of the romance between H/h. So you’re right, she’s always had a message in all her books. But her romance has taken a back seat lately and the message has became front and center that It’s a chore to read.
Her The Countess Conspiracy is, in my opinion, a wonderful example of “issues done right.” The heroine faces real consequences if she unveils herself as a reproductive biologist. The legal issues of marriage are connected to the science plot, not tacked on to tick more modern boxes. Historical examples of erasure of women scientists underpin the writing. It’s extremely good. And I can also see how writing like that for multiple books and at any kind of speed would be unsustainable.
Milan’s earlier works are amazingly excellent. In them, she understands what motivates humans to fall in love, to feel pain, to believe in something bigger than themselves. And in almost all of them–I’m not sure I’ve read ALL of them–she does show clearly the inequities and prejudices of the world her characters live in.
I agree with many of the points already made, and as a HR reader, I’ve realized that over the past couple of years, I’ve shifted over to contemporaries more and more. One thing that I would add is that I often would like to read HR set during under-utilized periods, such as the 18th century or post WWI, or even the Edwardian period. Settings too away from the UK are a great way to explore new ideas and bring some much-needed freshness to books.
I wouldn’t mind reading some westerns, actually. That was a time and place where women had to be strong and independent, especially if they lived on a ranch or farm. Women ran stores, saloons, whorehouses, eateries, they farmed and ranched, and they often had kids and siblings to take care of, too. Elizabeth Lowell used to write wonderful westerns, but I guess reader’s interests changed. Maybe some of you writers could think about that kind of historical romance?
Late Victorian era romance is interesting too, with ideas like women’s suffrage being discussed and technological advances happening in the western world. Romances set then can be fun, too!
I’m tired of dukes and don’t understand why barons aren’t good enough. I’m sure there were as many (or more) handsome, rich barons as there were dukes. I go out of my way to buy books where the hero is a commoner or something less than a duke, but dukes are so thick on the ground they are hard to avoid.
I’m tired of all the premarital sex with barely a thought of the consequences, and no, “I want to have some passion to remember in my anticipated spinsterhood” is not a good enough reason.
I don’t mind H/h with a mission, as charity and political activism did not start in the 20th C, even if it was rarer and harder in the 19th, but I do want a sense of the difficulties. Imogen Robertson wrote a wonderful historical mystery series set in late 18th C England where the heroine is quite aware of the limits placed on her as a woman. She tries to do her best within the prevailing social structures, but she chafes at the boundaries set on what is acceptable behavior. It is discouraging to read so many HR where the heroines – and sometimes the heroes – blithely ignore what is allowed and then suffer no consequences.
If I am reading a really good book, I’m under its spell. Anything that jerks me out of that spell is the enemy of that book. If I read “sell the heroine,” in a book about drugs, I’m jerked out. If I read addressing a duke “my lord,” instead of “Your grace,” I’m yanked out. Any error in spelling or grammar breaks the spell.
However, most of the time, I’m never under the spell anymore. I am bored, BORED with most books. I yawn through them, get up to do the dishes, and I never go back. Even with romances I like, I don’t remember them. Part of it is that I’ve read sooo many romances over the years that I’ve “done that, seen that” a million times. Yes, I notice historical inaccuracies, but if the spell is strong enough, I don’t care, frankly. I don’t want to read about poverty in the past. I, personally, don’t yearn for a book about domestic violence or incested kids. I know. I know. I’m shallow. I love knowing the end will be happy. I, personally, don’t want real historical accuracy. I don’t want the hero declaiming about the white man’s burden and his innate superiority over women and anyone who was not European. I don’t want to read about women who didn’t believe women should have the vote (see: Queen Victoria). On the other hand, I am bored with crusading feminists who don’t want to get married, even though they have no money and no marketable skills. You know, the one who decides to infiltrate a brothel on her birthday. I am bored with the good hearted spinster who loves to read. I yawn at the alcoholic aristocrat who 1. must marry money (you know what happens, right?) or 2. has just inherited an penniless title or 3. is bored with his meaningless life, yet strangely captivated by the crusading feminist. I loved all these books the first few times I read these characters. Not now. I WANT SOME ORIGINALITY. That’s what Courtney Milan, Julie Ann Long, and Emma Chase can give us. It’s what lots of authors who continue to write but the muse is long gone once gave us. (Out of respect and love for their past works, I will omit their names, but you know them. I bought their books long after I should have, in hopes that their talent would exert itself. It never did.)
In the past, the tension in romantic movies and books was supplied by one situation: Will they, or won’t they? Now, every single romance movie or book has eliminated that question. You KNOW they will. What is particularly egregious is authors’ total distortion of past sexual mores in historical fiction. Are they afraid that today’s readers will reject attitudes and values that our society no longer shares? Must we assume ALWAYS that whatever we believe now is the TRUTH INVIOLATE? Thank God we have the proper and true attitude toward everything today, even about men and women! Today’s authors (and publishing companies, clearly) believe that even historical fiction should be just like today, except with corsets.
Isn’t it interesting the P&P and “Jane Eyre,” written a century ago still can make us laugh, worry about its characters, still engage us–even after we’ve read them ten times.? I know. It’s not fair to demand that today’s authors rise to that level. But they prove that romances with characters who believe entirely differently from us still have power. I’m never bored when I’m “experiencing” someone different from me. Few romance authors can create characters, miraculously, that we care about from page one.
Unfortunately, too many authors don’t create. They copy.
The copying is a big problem, especially when they’re copying from other authors who don’t get it right either!
“… reading a really good book, I’m under its spell. Anything that jerks me out of that spell is the enemy of that book. If I read “sell the heroine,” in a book about drugs, I’m jerked out. If I read addressing a duke “my lord,” instead of “Your grace,” I’m yanked out. Any error in spelling or grammar breaks the spell.”
Yes!
And a few times, I can get back “in”. Too many “jerks”, I cannot .
This is, like you say, a completely different issue from plain old boredom.
And HR currently suffers from both.
Perfectly put, thanks!
I think another big issue contributing to this is that publishers have pigeon holed HR so much that there’s very little room for growth and creativity. It must be Regency. It must have a Duke/Earl (I think a marquess or viscount can pass but they’re not preferred). The same story can only be told so many ways.
I know someone writing american historicals that was told “move this to England and make the hero a duke and we’ll buy it” from a big publisher.
Sigh….
I’ve heard this from a few authors as well – and our very own Marian had the same experience I believe, when she submitted a (very good) historical in which the hero was (I think) an architect. Nope, she was told, give him a title and then maybe it might sell.
There are so many people like me and many of those commenting here who would happily read HR about non-titled people, and there are some authors – Carla Kelly and Marguerite Kaye come to mind immmediately – who DO write about commoners, but they’re in the minority.
Thanks, Caz! The agent’s exact suggestion was “make him the heir to a large fortune”. I rewrote the manuscript to show why the hero’s fiancee agreed to marry him despite his not being rich, but it still didn’t work for the agent, so that was that.
I wasn’t prepared to make the hero titled or wealthy because there was a good reason he couldn’t be either. But if publishers and agents want rich, titled men, there’s not much point in my continuing to send manuscripts where the hero works for a living. Maybe if I ever become established enough to write about such characters, I can dust off that manuscript and try again.
I think you should self-publish. Seriously, the books of yours I’ve read have been a damn sight better written and more interesting than more than half of the stuff I’m reading being put out by traditional publishers right now.
Ugh! I am so sorry this happened to you. It goes back to what I was saying in my previous post about that article Ellen Finnigan wrote. She said that publishing houses are basically in the business of producing “ideological cheeseburgers.” In other words, they stick to the same formula no different from a fast food restaurant that never deviates from their sub-standard hamburger recipe. Because that’s, apparently, what the public wants.
Did you or your agent look into Carina Press? They have a historical fiction line, and theirs tends to deviate quite a bit from all the expected titled heroes. And Avon publishes Cat Sebastian’s work, which also tends to fall outside of mainstream Regency romance expectations.
If all else fails, would you ever consider self-publishing? I know that’s off the table for a lot of serious authors, but it seems like such a shame to have an amazing story gather dust in a trunk or on a hard drive just because all the gatekeepers are being stubborn.
Thank you both for the encouragement!
I used to be a Samhain author, back when I wrote fantasy romance, but unfortunately Samhain went out of business. I did enjoy the perks of being trade published, though – not having to pay anything upfront for good editing, formatting and cover art, as well as having a publisher’s marketing department behind me. Those are all responsibilities self-publishers have to take on.
But at this point I do plan to self-publish if I can’t get any interest from the industry. I’ll see if my current manuscript has any success (it’s a beauty and the beast inspired historical where the beauty is a photographer who wants the beast as her subject) and if it gets no response from agents or editors, at least I have another option.
As far as I know, Avon requires manuscripts to be agented (and I don’t yet have an agent). Their e-publishing arm, Avon Impulse, accepts unagented manuscripts, but I’m guessing agented and established authors come first there too, because I’ve never received anything but form rejections from them. Ditto for Carina. I do have a full of another historical romance (which Caz was generous enough to beta read) out with an agent, but it’s been three months since I sent it to her, so that’s probably a no. If I didn’t love writing so much, I’d have given up a long time ago.
You are welcome, Ms. Perera. Hang in there!
I was so sorry to hear about Samhain going out of business. What little I knew of their work, it seemed like they were willing to take chances, push boundaries, and publish authors with something original and unique to say. *Sigh* Their demise certainly doesn’t encourage other publishing houses to take similar risks.
Thanks for sharing your insights about Avon and Carina Press. It sounds like self-publishing might be a better fit for you. Good editing and cover art are the big disadvantages, as you said. And as evidenced on this blog, romance readers can be quite discerning readers. On a personal note, I don’t want to say erotica readers don’t have similar standards for quality, but I haven’t had any complaints about my self-editing or generic cover designs yet. Unfortunately, erotica is probably the one genre where you can get away with totally free self-publishing and still sell books with a minimum of complaints. More’s the pity.
I know what you mean about a love of writing keeping you from giving up. As writers, we have an inner compulsion to write even if finances don’t bear out. I think that’s why we are so easily screwed. The ancient Greeks had a saying along the lines of “Being a writer is a form of divine madness.” (The actual line may have referred to poets rather than novelists, but I like my rendition of it.) And I quite agree!
That’s interesting too because in many current HRs, the wealthy are often portrayed as evil. There’s a real disconnect there–the idea that only the hero is a good guy but everyone else like him is not–that often makes me shake my head.
Maybe what many are talking about here is a longing for more nuance?
I don’t believe that I can add anything new to this discourse, it’s been all well expressed and I 110% agree. I have been in a deep reading slump with HR for more than two years now. I have dropped many authors – Dare, MacLean, Heath, Jefferies, Quinn, Hunter…….I wonder, if they realize or their publishers, how hard it will be for them to get us back.
That’s a really good point. I still make a point of picking up books by new authors because I strongly believe that’s part of the reviewer’s job and I can do it without any financial risk. Thankfully, some of those times, I’ve struck gold, but I could probably count those on the fingers of one hand – the dross far outweighs the gems. But the issue of once-reliable authors who are no longer reliable is interesting. I’ve said in various places that there are authors I used to pick up regularly whose books I’ve stopped reading – but what would it take for me to go back to them? Probably a review by someone whose opinions I trust telling me it’s worth my time. But publishers can’t rely on that (and neither can authors).
As with so many other things today, everything is about the now and sod the future. Many of the newer authors who appear get a 2 or 3 book deal and then disappear when sales aren’t great (almost always because the books aren’t great) – and I honestly believe part of the problem is that they’re being contracted too soon, before they’ve really honed their abilities, and are then left to their own devices without much editorial support. As someone here said, there are no “historical editors” – that said, I’m one, and I do know a couple of other developmental/content editors who specialise in HR – but I doubt any of the mainstream publishers use any.
I think that with the way things are going, there won’t be any “real” historicals around any more – well, certainly not that are published in the mainstream. It’s going to be up to the Indie authors to keep the flag flying…
Authors who read this should forward these posts to their publishers. Couldn’t hurt! And I challenge those publishers to come here and open an honest dialogue with us. You know…the people who pay their salaries?
I’m so sick and weary of bad research, bad writing, dukes, spies, modern women in a 19th century story … and did I mention bad writing?
I love historical romances. I cut my teeth on them in the 1980’s, perhaps the Golden Age of Historical Romances, Western Romances, and Regency romances…
So I am keeping Thrift Books in business with my search for the romances I remember loving — Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart, Patricia Veryan, Celeste DeBlasis, Rosanne Bittner, Lavyrle Spencer, Christine Monson, Woodiwiss, Brandewyne, M.M.Kaye, Diana Brown, Joy Freemen, and so many more who have faded from the front lines, but have a lyricism and intelligence that outshines the dull, repetitive, formulaic, poorly researched “historical” romances that have been published the last five years, or more. I call out Mary Balogh as an exception; her stories still charm and impress me.
I have joined Book of the Month club to expand my literary horizons, and for the most part the bad taste of 2019 historical romances is replaced by a stretching of my reading wings
Historical romance was my first love in the genre, but nowadays I read it less and less. I can only talk about the kind of book I like, which is NOT Tessa Dare or Julia Quinn, as I don’t usually connect with these light authors. I prefer intense and emotional love stories.
When I check my favourite novelists in the genre, what do I find? Well, Lisa Kleypas, keeps on publishing great romantic novels. But others… Laura Kinsale or Cecilia Grant? Not a new book in years or decades. Courtney Milan? I have this feeling that she is not interested in telling you a love story but other things that detract from the romantic core of the novel. I guess Joanna Bourne will publish something, in the future, all her novels are magnificent.
I haven’t seen anything written by recent authors that are even this close to those high standards that these authors have set in the past.
So, in the end, whenever I want something historical with a certain quality, I keep on going back to anything written by Loretta Chase, Mary Jo Putney, Jo Beverley or Mary Balogh. And if I want something really stylish, I buy a Georgette Heyer book.
I guess it is because, it doesn’t matter how trite the plots could be, those authors knew (the ones that are not with us today) and they still know (those that we can still count among ourselves) how to write in a very attractive way, with style and no need to put sex on each page, or try to be funny, with no depth of character..
But I’m 50 years old, perhaps younger readers will not enjoy a good Balogh, for instance. Perhaps somebody in her twenties or thirties want something ‘funny’ and sexy rather than an intense emotional journey with a little bit of respect towards the zeitgeist of the time in which the novel is supposed to be set.
Wow! A real outpouring of emotion here! I love the debate, the comments and the investment AAR staff and members are making in their reading and sharing. It seems there is a real divergence of thought on inaccuracy in HR. I read HR almost exclusively but I have two TBR piles and I read from both with the aim of balancing my reading. I guess that deep down I feel that as I read (and enjoy!) what some would call fluff that I must read serious stuff as well – but I enjoy it too and I have a list of books that are not overwhelmingly academic but have given me a framework over the years in which place HR. I would suggest very, very strongly that some would-be and even experienced HR authors ought to look at my list and pick out a few to read. I won’t list all 34 here but if anyone wants to see it, I will gladly send it to them by email or if the AAR Goddesses want me to, I will post it in full here. It’s exclusively social history about food, dress, sex, housekeeping, servants, social life, birth, death, filth (yes we can’t completely ignore it but it’s good to at least be aware that life was not sanitised), landscape, society and its hierarchy, famous women and men, social leaders and more. At the VERY least anyone writing HR set in the Regency period should read:
Georgette Heyer’s Regency World: The Definitive Guide to the People, Places and Society in her Regency Novels by Jennifer Kloester
The Private World of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge
However, I did say above I would get off my hobby horse (it’s now grazing in the back garden) and have a look at my “real” and electronic keeper shelves and list the HR (mainly Regency) authors that I read with real pleasure. Many are on the auto-buy list. Some are no longer with us or not writing any more. Some have been stupidly overlooked and are worth seeking out in the UBS or on line. Some have written the odd silly clangers that made me think twice about them (or produced good books at the beginning of their careers but then petered out) but I thought they all wrote well and seemed to get with the programme and did at least a modicum of research. Here goes:
Paul Allardyce (Loved “Octavia”)
Mary Balogh (peerless)
Jo Beverley
Emma Drummond (Army stories about India, the Crimea and 1st Afghan War)
Elisabeth Fairchild
Marjorie Farrell (so sadly overlooked – brilliant writer)
Valerie Fitzgerald (“Zemindar” – never produced another book. Too bad)
Anne Gracie (earlier books are the best)
Philippa Gregory (learned SO much about the Wars of the Roses from her)
Audrey Harrison
Barbara Hazard
Sandra Heath
Eva Ibbotson (semi YA but lovely writer with charming wit and lovely settings)
Carla Kelly (peerless)
Judith A Lansdowne (Overlooked, Big Mistake – loved “The Bedevilled Duke”)
Emily Larkin (a new find! On my TBR list now)
Edith Layton (much missed)
Elsie Lee (oldie but goodie for her Regencies)
Barbara Metzger (Excellent secondary characters, especially servants and dogs)
Mary Jo Putney
Joy Reed (also overlooked – elegant writer with great characterisations)
Stella Riley (another new find – wonderful writer)
Elizabeth Rolls
Anya Seton (not read “Katherine”? A Must Read)
Hazel Statham
Joanna Trollope (writing as Caroline Harvey – best is “Parson Harding’s Daughter” set in India – frequent re-read))
Gayle Wilson (not the mysteries)
Patricia A Wright (about Czarist 19th c Russia – lovely: “A Space of the Heart”)
I just read my first Elisabeth Fairchild. She’s wonderful!
I would add Lucinda Brant to your list. She has written several really good HRs. Her books mainly take place during the 1700s so it’s a nice to read something that is not a Regency.
I’ve just recently put Noble Satyr on my kindle – she’s new to me and I look forward to seeing how it goes.
Love Anya Seton. My copy of Katherine is falling apart from the many rereads. Avalon, Green Darkness, and Devil Water are other keepers. I don’t think publishers would know how to classify her books today as they had elements of history, romance, mystery, gothic suspense, etc.,, but I don’t think they would fit into one category or formula. Particularly today, readers don’t like to read about adultery (Katherine had an ongoing affair with John of Gaunt while he was married to his second wife). Times and readers preferences have changed. And that may be part of the problem with why there aren’t as many good HRs being written. The stories have become too sanitized in order to cater to today’s viewpoints.
KATHERINE was one of my gateways to historical fiction (I also read a lot of Jean Plaidy and the now-rarely-mentioned Margaret Campbell Barnes back in the day)—but I think the key is to remember that, with KATHERINE, Seton was writing historical fiction, not historical romance. She did a tremendous amount of research into the lives of Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt, Geoffrey Chaucer (Katherine’s brother-in-law), etc., for the book. She was fictionalizing real lives and events. This is opposed to historical romance where, possibly, a historical personage might walk through a scene, but the main characters are usually purely the product of the author’s imagination. I’m not sure a historical romance featuring decades of adultery and many illegitimate children would appeal to many readers, but that was the actual truth of Katherine’s life—and Seton made her both sympathetic and relatable.
All of the comments here go a long way to articulating why my romance reading has made a complete 180 over the last seven or so years. In 2012, I was reading about 95% HR, throwing in the occasional contemporary. Now, I read contemporaries almost exclusively. Looking at my reading log for this year so far, I haven’t read a single new HR (but I have done a couple of Mary Balogh rereads). I figured, if most HR was basically going to be “contemporaries in corsets,” I might as well ditch the corsets and just read contemporaries where at least it made sense for the heroine to have a career, not be overly focused on being married by 25, have opinions, confront reactionary attitudes, etc.
While I agree that Katherine is historical fiction rather than historical romance, 40 or 50 years ago it was marketed and shelved with the romances in stores and libraries. That is part of the problem with modern romance publishing, the genre is very narrowly defined. We like our escapist fantasy and HEAs so that narrowly defined genre isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does make it difficult to inject some fresh ideas into the stories.
Jean Plaidy was my go-to author in my teens! I still maintain I learned more actual history from reading her books than I ever did at school!
And you’ve made the point I was going to make about Katherine; it’s a great read, but it’s HF rather than HR.
I have many of these authors on my bookshelf. Will need to look for those I don’t.
I’d like to add:
Dinah Dean (Cockermouth Mail is my favorite)
Sylvia Thorpe
Sheila Bishop
Most are either no longer with us or not writing.
Seconding “The Cockermouth Mail”! Excellent Christmas book.
Yes, Dinah Dean. Also loved “That Sweet Enemy” by her. The “Cockermouth Mail” is definitely, IASHM, a lovely Christmas re-read.
Looks like we have similar taste, Elaine. I’d add Brenda Jagger to your list. I think her books are out of print, but you can find a few at open library. Her Barforth family saga is well worth tracking down.
I would love to have this list of reference books, Elaine – I’d rather not post my email here but if there’s a way to post the list in a comment or as a separate page on the site that would be such a wonderful resource. I love histories focused on domesticity/life at home. One book that’s come to mind because of some of the comments here is Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale. It’s one of the best works of history I’ve ever read, based on the diary of a midwife working in Maine in the years just after the Revolutionary War. It’s astonishing.
I’m happy to act as intermediary – [email protected]
Hi Katherine. I’ve just emailed Caz with the list. Hope you find it interesting!
Thank you so much, Elaine, and thanks Caz – this is lovely of you and I’m looking forward to diving in!
agree with many of the thoughts expressed here. recently got back into HR after a three year long gap and have been craving character driven stories. i read judith ivory’s black silk this past week and was surprised-it never would have been published today. authors today are much less likely to write ‘grey’ characters or explore complex issues well. there’s a childish simplicity to how many HR authors write serious issues and too often a boring mystery is used to compensate for a lack of character development. would very much be grateful for recommendations re: interesting, character focused HR
I must admit, I find it impossible to read novels based during colonial times in India (I’ve even recently found myself unable to read Heyer’s Black Sheep). There’s such blindness about the fact that the English were the bad guys during that time. It’s like reading novels about slave-owners as heroes.
It’s becoming increasingly common now, and adding in to why I’m turning off historicals
Arriving at this conversation a day late.
I am disappointed by much of the historical romance I’ve read lately. I don’t know if it’s possible or practical to include gender/sexuality/race/equality within the content of a single romance novel and still have room to write an engrossing romantic love story. It’s often a case of more is too much. I’m not troubled by lots of dukes or familiar tropes if the rest of the storytelling is strong. Compelling characters, interesting settings, clever writing and lots of romance. If those elements are well done, the author can impart a message, too. But when I feel an author is patronizing me and/or ‘teaching me a lesson,’ right out of the gate, I’m usually too fired up to enjoy whatever comes next (which, btw, if often more of the same).
I can’t speak to what goes on when a writer hands their work off to a publisher, and the story changes to meet whatever niche the publisher needs it to fill.
I think that could be another @ask AAR column – what does happen afterwards? I have noticed a lot more creative, quality storytelling coming out of authors who self-publish, though. I just finished the new KJ Charles, Gilded Cage, and it’s brilliant. (Review to come). KJ self-publishes, is also a wonderful historical romance writer (this is important too!), and seamlessly incorporates diverse and inclusive casts of characters into all of her novels. The Lilywhite Boys series is yet another wonderful example. Everything flows from great storytelling – the author doesn’t pander to her audience or beat us over the head with societal messages. The characters and their history and experiences are intrinsic to the plot, enhancing the story in every way. Historical accuracy is also important to this author and it shows. And while KJ may include members of the aristocracy in her stories, they’re usually largely secondary characters and often the target for derision and mockery. I sort of love how hard she goes after her dukes.
I want to mention one other important reason I haven’t enjoyed historical romance as much this year. There are simply TOO MANY other terrific books to compare to it! Yes, I think HR writers are struggling – and it’s a bummer. But historical and contemporary suspense writers are absolutely killing it, and I’ve lost track of how many new favorite contemporary writers I’ve added to my GR shelves lately. Off the top of my head? Kennedy Ryan, Kate Clayborn, Keira Andrews, Annabeth Albert, Molly O’Keefe, Gregory Ashe, Amy Lane, Roan Parrish, Talia Hibbert, Sidney Bell, Charlie Adhara, Jenn Burke, Sally Malcolm, Lily Morton, Hailey Turner…And that Beth O’Leary book (The Flatshare) – THAT WAS A DEBUT and it was tremendous. Honestly, I’m so surprised it hasn’t become the crazy wild success that The Hating Game was – it’s JUST AS GOOD AND LOVELY AND WONDERFUL – go read it!).
It’s a pity if you only read historical romance and/or only read m/f historical romance (for lots of reasons!). I hope/believe HR will shake out these growing pains and we’ll see better quality stories in the future, but I think it’s going to take some time. I’m still loving Elizabeth Kingston, Joanna Chambers, Julie Ann Long, KJ Charles, Bec McMaster (so great!), Loretta Chase, Stella Riley…and more & I”m also looking forward to the newest Vincy. But with so much variety in Romancelandia, there’s plenty to keep me happy while I not-so-patiently wait.
Oh, one more thing. I spent the summer bingeing the back catalogs of many of my favorite historical writers. I’d read all of these novels before, but needed some comfort reading to get me through a tough spell. I read Kleypas, Thomas, Duran and a few more bigger names, and FWIW, now that I’ve read so much more historical romance….well, these books are good but not quite as AMAZING as I once thought. And I realized my impression of newer titles was sometimes negatively affected by a remembered love for these older titles, even though they weren’t quite as brilliant as I remembered. I glommed my way through all the big names during those early halcyon romance reading days…and time and experience has substantially altered my opinion of more than a few of them.
Em’s life: More Than You Needed (or Wanted) to Know.
AKA, Life on the Soapbox
The End.
Em, so true!
I reread and not that maybe, my taste has changed, and those old loves are weaker than I thought.
(But they used grammar correctly….. sigh)
I’d add fantasy to that. I’ve recently read Holly Black’s latest and Philip Pullman’s latest and both are fabulous with strong female leads who are determined to upend the power structure.
I think some of what stifles HR and even art in general lately is also a fear of creating something that will be controversial. I’ve watched with dismay as authors have, post publication, pulled books because something in them was offensive to someone. I’ll simply never agree that one of art’s goals should be to be non-offensive.
I agree wholeheartedly with that! Art is meant to push boundaries, to make people think, to make them feel. Artists cannot and should not be responsible for how their work is interpreted; it just *is*, and the interpretation is up to the individual.
I believe strongly that the amount of rage and vengefulness in a global social media debate gets to be too much for people.
It would be too much for me.
Another reason for blandness prevailing.
Like Mark below, I see no cure, for this either.
Thank you for your comments. I write historicals and after many, many years of rejections due to my time period, not my writing, I’ve decided to self publish. I also quit reading most of the afore mentioned authors because I am bored with Dukes, and the tropes that are popular now. I reread my old books, and the only new author I’ve read is Kerrigan Byrne, because she writes dark historicals like Anne Stuart used to. Otherwise, most of my new reads are from British Authors. Francine Howarth is amazing, Helen Hollick, Annie Whitehead, to name a few. Check them out. And I have a few good friends who write historicals and the pressure to sell is immense. It’s no different than in the movies, remake, rehash something old because it sold in the past. Money and profit trumps everything and kills the creative art that’s truly out there. It sad. So I will choose to self publish, if only to please myself and say I did it.
Good for you, Ms. Lynn. And good luck!
I notice you write stories set in the Restoration Period. Awesome! Have you read “Forever Amber” by Kathleen Winsor? It’s a real page turner with a fiery heroine hot on the trail of the man she loves- while engaging in several rendezvous along the way. It is historical fiction rather than historical romance, and is surprisingly frank in its treatment of sexuality for a book published in the 1940s. There’s no on-page sex, and it was Banned in Boston, but it’s a real treat to read. And I’m told it was very well researched.
Regarding the accuracy issue, this topic is a perennial for the community of readers. This was an AAR column in 2003: http://allaboutromance.com/at-the-back-fence-158/.
Regarding being tired of dukes, they are a symptom of a broader inflation problem that shows up in a lot of fiction: title inflation, wealth inflation, power inflation, destructiveness inflation, etc. Heyer managed to write a lot of books with Regency settings with only a few dukes among the protagonists. In the years since, dukes have become common. Some years ago, a millionaire was a big deal, now books are littered with billionaires. In paranormal / fantastic / science fictional stories, especially series, there is a large subset with characters and/or devices that grow more powerful with each story. In the “Golden Age” SF of E. E. “Doc” Smith (Skylark series and Lensmen series), conflicts grew from continental scale to planetary to galactic or intergalactic. Inflation occurs in the works of single authors, and in whole genres. I don’t know a cure.
I think we’re in the trough of disillusionment in the hype cycle. Fortunately, it should be followed by the slope of enlightenment.
More on the hype cycle, which addresses technology specifically, but you could apply it to a lot of other things:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
I’m really enjoying this thread – and agree with nearly everything you have all said. Mark’s comments too, although as rare as hen’s teeth recently, are as dry and pertinent as always. Can I endorse the suggestion made to read Brenda Jagger? Also, although technically more ‘historical faction’ – you may want to try Rosemary Hawley Jarman. She wrote excellent books set in the Plantagenet Era, although she has also written on Agincourt. Finally if you really want to get away from Dukes, on my DIK list is Beverley Hughesdon’s ‘Song of Songs’ set in WW1. It is a love story between Lady Helena, and a northern working class train driver. It encompasses the Boer war: the trenches: British post-war class struggles and attitudes and has a cracking love story…
Oh, there’s a name from my reading youth: Rosemary Hawley Jarman. I loved WE SPEAK NO TREASON, a different view of Richard III, and CROWN IN CANDLELIGHT, about the illicit affair between Henry V’s widow and Owen Tudor. Of course, I’ve read neither book in 40 years, but I seem to remember them being quite sexually explicit. Possibly the first historical fiction to be influenced by the bodice-ripping trend of the mid-1970s.
Much to my surprise Brenda Jagger’s Barforth trilogy has been digitized. I had to hunt down paperbacks when I read them several years ago.
A lot of this goes in cycles. Some 9 years ago it felt like the contemporaries had a quality problem – I read few of them, most seemed to be focused on rather silly romantic suspense plots and I was reading few. Dear Author even run a bunch of posts under “Save a contemporary” heading, saying that single title contemporaties were “a hard sell”. https://dearauthor.com/misc/contestsgiveaways/save-the-contemporary-one-book-at-a-time/
Now things have turned and I read lots of great contemporaries but historicals have a quality problem and it feels like it narrowed in the same way as contemporaries did 10 years ago – then it was “suspense or nothing” in contemporaries; now it is “duke and heroine with a cause or nothing” in historicals. I have to trust that it will sort itself out eventually and the cycle will be on the upswing again.
I was just thinking about this campaign the other day!!! I was trying to find a good HR to read and thought “Forget ‘Save the Contemporary’! It worked and now we need to work on historicals.”
I don’t do much in the way of social media, I don’t even have a Facebook page. But I think people jumping all over ideas they have barely thought about is rarely a good idea. I know they have impact, but taking the opinions of the masses with such seriousness should be carefully considered. I understand why artists and public persons want to create and behave in ways that don’t make waves. No one wants to be attacked.
But some of our greatest works of literature have depicted awful things; Heathcliff and Cathy savaging one another emotionally, Mr Rochester’s highly inappropriate attempt to marry Jane Eyre when he was already married, the societal upheavals and violence depicted in les Miserables, nearly everything Poe ever wrote, just to name a few. Would those things be published today? It’s doubtful, imo. And if they were, I can certainly see the Bronte sisters taking a public drubbing for their dark, depressing, yet brilliant gothic novels.
So I think that writers need to be brave, they need to write what their gut tells them to write, and self-publish If they must. I want to hear authentic voices, I want to read about original ideas, and I want this in all genres and in non-fiction too, which I also read.
As readers, we have an important way to vote – our wallets! And when you do sometimes find yourself slogging through uninspired crap, write to the publisher. Complain. Tell them what you do want to read, and exactly what you don’t.
The twitterverse can go hang as far as I’m concerned!
” I understand why artists and public persons want to create and behave in ways that don’t make waves. No one wants to be attacked.”
Sometimes it’s a question of money too. I have a day job, but if I relied on writing to pay my bills, it might come down to two choices. Either I write about dukes and social-crusader heroines and earn generous advances from publishers, or I go it solo, pay for everything out of my own pocket, and see if the public can find my original stories among the millions of self-published romances out there.
I say “might” because I still believe there’s more variety and creativity in the industry. But I also feel that there are reasons authors might not be comfortable with taking risks.
I am sure every writer has a reason why they do or don’t self pub. Economic realities are exactly that..reality. Everyone wants you to feed your kids, keep the heat on, and have a savings account. And certainly no one wants to see you abused online or elsewhere by the unthinking masses. I want you to write, but it is heartbreaking that you must write what publishing houses think we want to read instead of what you dream of writing. Because I want to read the book you dream of, not the book someone else tells you is profitable.
But those of us who are readers have a voice, too. We need to demand better content from publishers, perhaps consider serving writers by becoming freelance editors or cover artists ourselves if we have such talents, and stop buying third rate books. Hit them in the pocketbook. That will get their attention like nothing else.
It’s very well summed up in “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure” by: Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff. I read this earlier this year and, though not shocked, was nonetheless, saddened. So different from when I was at the University of California from ’67 to ’71. So much going on – the killings of RFK and MLK, the ’68 Democratic convention in Chicago, Kent State, Viet Nam, friends coming home in boxes, blah, blah. But we were challenged with ideas, books and situations that we did not necessarily like, agree with or accept but that was TOUGH! We were expected to read, to learn and then argue our corner and see how we could change things. Not fall over in a mess of complaints, safe places, rooms with teddy bears, etc. I shudder at some of it. Makes me want to be pretty violently sick.